


A Xenological Exploration of Music and Language

by superbloom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alien Culture, Con-lang nonsense, Dave's Rude Mouth, Explicit Sexual Content, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Rap Music, Troll Nicki Minaj, Xenolinguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-03-17 16:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superbloom/pseuds/superbloom
Summary: “In our schoolfeeds we study a bunch of famous poets to get us cultured or whatever," Karkat explained. "Most of them are highbloods, which is bullshit. We don’t really get to hear about great lowblood poets of the past.”He spoke about Alternia as though it still existed. And something about that chafed against Dave’s heart.[If you recognize this story, it's because a very long time ago I posted it in a different account, under a different username, but then later I deleted all of my work for personal reasons. Now I'm at a different stage in my life and I want to revisit this piece. So here is my newly revised version.]





	1. Onikka Marraj

**Author's Note:**

> It's so strange returning to reexamine a story you wrote many years ago. You see everything with a different perspective. 
> 
> For instance, I was just recently out of my teens when I first wrote this piece, so sixteen/seventeen year olds having sex seemed completely mundane. Now I am an Adult™ and imagining two mid-teens getting hot and heavy is deeply unappealing to me. Like, no shade if you're a seventeen year old who fools around with other seventeen year olds. That's totally normal. I'm just past that stage in my life. That's something I had to address in order to make myself edit the sex-centric bits.
> 
> But! I hear you asking "if Dave and Karkat are now *coughcough*???twentninetee???ntwentyoneadult(???)*cough* years old then why are they still on the meteor? Is this some kind of AU?" Let me answer your question with a question. Who wants to read about a human and an alien who fuck while also enjoying some sidebar conlang nonsense?
> 
> Okay, let's get to it.

Lately, whenever Dave rubbed one out he tried to use a flushed, panting Karkat as the clean-burning fuel for his coital engine. Dave would take the Karkat in his mind and lay him out flat, enjoying his head and torso, and moving downward to seek uncharted territory. But he’d yank his jeans down and find nothing but a blank space sitting between Karkat’s legs, devoid of shape and color.  Dave could mentally caress him on every theoretical patch of grey skin he could dream up, but the troll bathing suit area remained mysterious.  It was a neon-flashing question mark and the Jeopardy jingle on an eternal loop. Troll anatomy for two thousand: Alex, what is a possibly hermaphroditic set of genitalia of unknown dimensions, arrangement, and function?

And, honestly, Dave could not suspend his disbelief long enough to allow wanton, drooling, fantasy Karkat a taste of his cock. His teeth were too much to endure just to get a blowjob. 

He lay at the end of the bed with an arm thrown over his eyes and godtier pajamas pooling around his ankles, lamenting that Karkat’s lips would never wrap around his dick. Dave satisfied himself with daydreams about his tongue. Hot, smooth, wet, and lapping at beads of cum sliding down the shaft. Purring at the taste. Dave dragged the head across his cheek, smearing ashen flesh with white. Often the Karkat-based musings ended in Dave giving him a facial and then gawking while his dark tongue lapped up what it could reach. 

Dave’s primary handicap was that he knew nothing about sex first hand. Inexperience only aggravated the much bigger issue that was the question of troll anatomy. Dave had no idea what to do with Karkat. Nor could he furnish his fantasies with sensory details beyond scent. Like his skin. It smelled different, but did it taste different? When Dave “accidentally” brushed his hand over Karkat’s, it felt the same as human skin. But did trolls sweat?

Dave invented reasons to be around him. He needed to borrow his computer, or he needed to hide from Rose, or he lost his iPod and he needed help tracking it down. Karkat acquiesced, if only just to have the opportunity to bat Dave around like a kitten trying to subdue a jingly ball.  That was why that “morning” on the meteor Dave had conceived a trap that was the Karkat equivalent of a turkey leg dangled over a hole covered in leaves. He got into position, propping himself up on the kitchen counter with his elbows and leaned forward with his impudent, downright unmannerly ass in the air. He raised his coffee cup when his ears picked up the slap of ratty sneakers coming down the hall. 

He allowed a dribble of coffee to roll down the side of his mug just as Karkat skulked by. The puddle pulled the troll in. 

“Do you want marchbugs?” He jabbed a finger at the countertop. “Is that what you’re after? Because you’re putting yourself in a diabetic death state every day with the amount of sugar you dump in that vile bean water. A single drop will bring a plague upon us. Right now, I am the only one cleaning the nutrition block. The one thing standing between us and a thousand armies of tiny black warriors obliterating our hypothetical space lawnmeal is _me_. Clean up after yourself. I’m not your damn lusus.” 

Dave pretended to find a more comfortable pose, jostling more coffee out of his cup in the process. It spread to the sink, pouring over the edge into the basin. “Marchbugs. Do you mean ants? Why would there be ants in space?” 

Karkat glowered. Dave rolled the mug between his palms, smirk cranked up to full volume. “I mean we’re hurtling through an endless void. On a meteor. Where would the ants even come from?” 

“We could pick them up in a dream bubble, obviously.” 

Karkat clenched his jaw as Dave tilted his wrist, slopping more liquid across the granite. The stream followed the slight tilt of the counter until it found the coffee-producing pod, where it gathered around the dinted base. “Could we though,” Dave asked. “What would they even be? Ghost ants? I’ve never even seen so much as a cobweb in the lab. I’m pretty sure we’re the only living things—“ 

Karkat lunged. His hand shot out and snatched the cup out of Dave’s hand, sloshing the drink out over his fingers and splattering the floor. Karkat hissed. The tips of his ears flicked upward. 

“Wow,” said Dave. “Unbelievable. That was definitely your fault. Let me just tell you, I am not cleaning that up—“ 

“Fuck you,” he said. “At least half of this mess is your doing.” 

Following a lifetime of tirades, Karkat’s voice was raw and a little gritty. Rough as though he'd just woken up. Dave kept him talking. 

“Only because you distracted me with your lecture."

Karkat ran his hands under the faucet. “The bullshit that pours out of your mouth. I don’t know how you stand the smell of your own breath.” 

“You had my undivided attention,” Dave insisted. He ripped a paper towel off the roll and wiped his fingers clean. “I couldn’t focus on not spilling because I couldn’t bear to miss a word of what you were saying. You know how I feel about your opinions on sanitation—“ 

“You know what,” said Karkat, “I _was_ thinking about introducing you to some Alternian beat poetry but now I’m having second thoughts.” 

Dave paused. He snorted and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Who says I wanted to hear any of that shit, anyway?” 

“Kanaya told me.” 

“Yeah... well... I’ll just have her show me. She and I are buds. I don’t need you to be my mystical guide through the land of alien rap.” 

“Then I hope you enjoy sonnets about rainbow drinkers.” He flipped Dave off by way of saying goodbye before sauntering out down the hall, no doubt to find a new transgression to police. Dave studied his back as he turned the corner. His eyes wandered along his shoulders, observing the way the bones shifted beneath his sweater. It fit him now. A year ago, he was a wire hanger. 

Dave sighed. Kanaya had alchemized a selection of alien cleaning products, including a spray bottle of fruity disinfectant, which had an actual name but it was shot through with so many lingual-palatal fricatives and cricket noises that Rose and Dave called it Troll Windex. Dave dispatched a fistful of paper towels to soak up the puddles of coffee before spritzing the residue. He delivered the refuse to the trashcan, but found it full to the brim with eye-watering stink. He took a breath, tied the bag closed, and escorted the garbage to the incinerator.

TG: alright my liege your kitchen  
TG: oh excuse me i mean your troll nutrition alien block  
TG: is now as spotless as the heavenly throne your ass graces  
TG: whats this noise about alternian beat poetry

CG: YOU CLEANED THE NUTRITION BLOCK?

TG: yeah even the slop you sloshed all over the floor like a goddamn animal  
TG: couldnt bear to see you in distress  
TG: i even hosed the place down with troll windex  
TG: look at me  
TG: being all multicultural and shit

CG: LIKE HELL YOU DID. I’LL BELIEVE THAT WHEN TEREZI CAN WALK PASSED A FIRE HYDRANT WITHOUT TRYING TO INGEST IT.

TG: its true come look  
TG: i can see my face in the reflection  
TG: handsome motherfucker  
TG: i almost kissed him it looks that damn good

CG: I’M THRILLED FOR YOU TWO. FAIRYTALE ROMANCES DO EXIST AFTER ALL. THE ASSHOLE FINALLY FINDS THE ONLY OTHER ASSHOLE IN THE MULTIVERSE WHO WILL TOLERATE HIM AND IT TURNS OUT HE’S BEEN STARING AT HIM IN THE MIRROR ALL ALONG. SOMEONE SHOULD MAKE A FILM ABOUT IT SO I CAN WAIT FOR IT TO COME OUT ON TROLL NETFLIX AND THEN FORGET TO WATCH IT.

TG: can i come get my alien rap education  
TG: or are you going to force me to listen to kanaya drone on about vampires fucking with chainsaws and guzzling skittles out of buckets and tasting the rainbow or whatever  
TG: are you in your block  
TG: fuck i mean room  
TG: goddamn troll words

CG: I’M BUSY.

TG: awesome ill be right there

Karkat locked his door in preparation for his visitor. Dave tapped at the code panel. A digital message scrolled across the pixelated screen. _FUCK OFF_. 

Dave knocked. “Hey.”

“I told you I’m busy,” he barked. 

Dave leaned against the wall. “You can’t help wanting to stick your nose into other people’s business so you might as well stop pretending you have any self control and let me in.” 

“Fuck you.” 

In Karkat’s mouth, English words sounded two times as long and at least three times more Russian. The Alternian accent was a gurgle-buzz with bright notes of India and an undercurrent of the Iron Curtain. But fuck was one word Karkat enunciated without any foreign lilt. It came off of his tongue like a dart. 

“Can you resist the siren’s call,” Dave asked. “Do you need me to go get Kanaya so she can tie you to a ship’s mast?” 

A hiss reached Dave through the door. Karkat popped his head out and fixed him with a glare. 

Dave bowed, arms rigid at his sides. “Sensei.” 

“You smell homeless.” 

“Yeah, I fucked around in the trash getting your food sanctum all pristine. Like I said, I cleaned the damn kitchen. You’re welcome. Let me in.” 

Karkat braced both arms against the doorframe, barricading Dave from his room. His eyes narrowed into thin gold lines. “Why do you want me to teach you so bad? I’ve never seen you so adamant about wanting to do something in my vicinity. This is surreal. Check out your face, Strider. You’re almost having an emotion.” 

Dave put up his hands. “Oh my fucking god. Fifteen minutes ago you were dangling your wacky alien slam poetry over my head, making me jump for it, and now you don’t want to show me anything.” 

“We pass through plenty of dream bubbles with trolls far better qualified than I to initiate you into the school of Alternia’s highest art form. Tavros—“ 

“No.” 

“—or Equius—“ 

“Fuck no.” 

“Then, Kanaya. She was the one who offered in the first place.” 

“You said that you wanted to introduce me to your rap. Just now. In the kitchen. You were the one who brought it up.” 

A flash of embarrassment stole into Karkat’s grimace. “I only said that to make you clean the nutrition block.” 

“Come on, man. Let me in.” Dave leaned against the doorframe, planting one foot in Karkat’s territory. He tilted his head in the portrait of innocence. “How bad could it be?” 

Karkat let his arms fall. He mumbled, “I guess I can take a little time out of my schedule to educate you.” 

Lights aren’t bright in troll abodes. There was usually little more than a single lantern, if anything at all. Through his shades, the room stood before him like a black wall with nothing distinguishable but a bright spot in the distance and a vague Karkat-shape fading in and out of Dave’s field of vision, no more than a silhouette topped with a brush of hair. Karkat fiddled with a dimmer. The spot of light expanded into a desk lamp, engulfing shapes of a table and a sleepyslime cocoon. Dave hazarded a step inside. 

“There. Your weak human eyes should be able to handle that.” 

“It’s still dark as shit.”

“Take your shades off, you colossal dumbass.”

“Nah.” 

Karkat pulled a wide blue tome out from under a stack of romance novels mountained by his recuperacoon. “This is my old literature textbook.” 

“You found that pretty fast,” Dave grunted. “Almost like you had it ready for me.” 

Karkat ignored him. Dave felt his way out of the circle of light emanating from the desk lamp toward a black hulk of a sofa. Karkat dropped on the cushions. Dave hunkered down. Their hips suffered five inches of no-homo no-man’s-land. Only their shoulders touched. Dave honed in on the contact, savoring the warmth and the hard bone just thinly sheathed in flesh. Dave breathed him in. He was earthy and just a little unwashed, with a hint of something sweet that might have been soap and a hint of something muddy that might have been sweat. 

“In our schoolfeeds we study a bunch of famous poets to get us cultured or whatever," Karkat explained. "Most of them are highbloods, which is bullshit. We don’t really get to hear about great lowblood poets of the past.” 

He spoke about Alternia as though it still existed. And something about that chafed against Dave’s heart. He glanced away from Karkat and snorted, “What is troll school even? Is it just, like, robots with cattle prods rounding up a bunch feral children and then screaming math equations at them?” 

Karkat continued, horns bowed. “ _Anyway_. One highblood we learn about is Onikka Marraj,” he continued. The rapidly flipped pages puffed a small breeze across Dave’s face. “I like her. I mean, I can’t not like her; she’s a part of our history. But even if she weren’t so highly regarded, I’d still like her.” 

“Troll Shakespeare.” 

Karkat shrugged. “I’m assuming that’s an acclaimed human rapper.” He braced a leg against the table and propped the textbook on his knee. He scanned the page, reading the dagger-sharp glyphs. “She was sort of in the background for a while, but people would attend other big-name poets’ performances just to hear her.” 

Dave shifted closer, not quite closing the gap but teasing himself with the warmth of Karkat’s thigh. 

“And it pissed off a lot of people. She had purple blood, so she was in a high enough caste that she got away with a lot of one-upmanship. But she offended another poet, a seadweller, Javaan Rudaba—a very talented, very ornery individual—and the resulting feud came close to drawing blood. The story goes that someone complimented her skills by saying she delivered like Onikka Marraj. She didn’t appreciate the comparison.” 

“Am I going to get to hear any of these alleged Alternian rappers or is this just a history lesson?” Dave jostled Karkat’s shoulder, half to annoy him, half just to reaffirm their bodies still touched. 

Karkat shot Dave a withering side-glance. “We can’t listen to them because it’s all in Alternian, so I’m just going to translate for you.” 

“Are you any good?” 

“At what? Poetry? No, but I’m not writing it, you dipshit.” He tapped the textbook. “I’m just reading this out loud.” 

Dave curled his lip. “Man, no. You can’t just read it. There’s a cadence that the poet designed to cradle the words and a beat to snuggle around every syllable and a metre to rock that baby to sleep. Can you do it justice? With your smoker’s trachea and lack of volume control, I think not.” 

Karkat groaned. “Fuck. Fine. Hold on.” He went to his computer. 

Dave smoothed a hand over the warm patch Karkat left behind. The textbook sat on the table. It displayed a bright red title at the start of the chapter and pictures to amuse the students not inclined to reading and bright yellow ‘did you know...?’ boxes containing useless tidbits of information that didn’t quite jive with the main text. It was familiar except for the scimitar letters spanning the pages, with their strange, brutal angles. 

A rhythm thumped from the computer’s scratchy speakers. A troll snarled through the beats and if not for the syncopation, there was no way to tell if it was speaking in words or just beastly utterings. 

“This is a reproduction of Marraj’s verse from a legendary rap battle. After her turn, her opponents conceded defeat before the Grand Highblood could even pass judgment.” 

Karkat joined Dave on the sofa. Their hips pressed together and shiver ran up Dave’s spine. The textbook returned to Karkat’s lap. His finger traced a chunk of text, his mouth moving along with the words. Dave listened to the twisting language, puzzling at each click and keen until the snarling words dropped off. A bridge led into the next verse. 

“Now she starts,” said Karkat.

A new voice came over the speakers, feminine and forceful. Karkat spoke over her. 

“ _Pull up in the monster automobile gangster, with a bad bitch that came from East Alternia. Yeah, I’m in that Tonka, color of Whilli Wonkha. You could be the King, but watch the Queen conquer... Okay first things first I’ll eat your brains, then I’m a start rocking gold teeth and fangs, cause that’s a motherfucking monster do...”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [Onikka Marraj](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTkEpkGKgoY)


	2. Doomtree

“Who is this human rapper again?” 

“Notorious B. I. G.” said Dave. “Man, get with it.” 

He nestled the headphones over Karkat’s skull. They had learned that earbuds didn't remain jammed in the trolls’ elfin auricular whatever-the-fucks. Dave pretended to adjust the headband so he could brush his fingers over the satiny tips, breaking into a secret grin when they fluttered against his hands. 

Karkat shooed him. “Get your grabby monkey hands off my ears.”

“I wasn’t doing anything to your freaky ears.”

“Yeah, right. You and Rose, both. Kanaya told me your littermate is always going after hers. 

Dave snorted. “Ever since Rose started putting booze into everything she’s become super handsy. It’s not a human thing, okay. I want nothing to do with the greasy bat wings you’ve got protruding out of your head.” 

He plopped on the sofa. Yesterday’s five-inch safe zone was reduced to one inch with some suave choreography on Dave’s part, involving a surreptitious three-inch scoot to the right and an almost imperceptible one-inch lean. When Karkat moved away, he nudged closer. 

“Strider, you’re in my fucking lap.” 

“In your lonely, bestial fantasies. I’m just trying to hear the music. I want to know where you’re at.” 

Puff Daddy piped through the speakers, “ _As we proceed to give you what you need...”_

Dave leaned closer so that warmth transferred between their cheeks. Karkat’s ear twitched against his hair.

Biggie hummed through the headphones. “ _Who shot ya? Separate the weak from the obsolete,_ _hard to creep them Brooklyn streets—“_

Their shoulders rubbed together. Dave’s eyes flicked down the line of his neck. Not long or elegant, but smooth, and curved forward by several graceful degrees. Tendons flexed. Karkat’s adam’s apple—or whatever bizarre term trolls reserved for it—wobbled as he swallowed. Dave filed that detail away for an upcoming wank session. 

“Dave,” said Karkat, mouth loud next to his ear. He paused Dave’s iPod. “Remind me... a daughter is a human female who...?” 

“What?”

“In the poem, the Notorious Biyaji mentions a daughter and electrical tape.” 

Dave pushed his shades up his nose. He prepared for his whole life to become the rap guru his brother raised him to be. Now was his ascension. “He’s saying he will kidnap somebody’s kid. A daughter is a girl offspring.” 

“And what is...” Karkat took a second to rewind the song. "...blunts with... yayo?” 

“A blunt is a thing that has leaves inside.” Dave pointed at Karkat’s cocoon. “And they act kind of like your sleepy goo. You light it on fire and suck the smoke out.” 

At the mention of sucking, Karkat’s gaze slipped from Dave’s eyes and came to rest on his lips. Dave’s heart flew into his mouth, pinning his tongue to his teeth. 

He cleared his throat. “And yayo is a drug that’ll get you all kinds of fucked up. Sometimes people combine the two.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Mostly just to prove they’re hard as fuck, I guess.”

Karkat shook his head. He muttered, “ _dekyus shu kash vehek_ …” 

“What?”

“Nothing.” He slipped the headphones back over his ears.

“You said words. Or clicked them, or whatever. I heard you.” 

Karkat narrowed his eyes. “Maybe if you took some time to learn Alternian—the way I learned English—I wouldn’t have to provide closed captioning for every time I so much as fart in my own language.” 

“That’s not fair, man. Trolls have got crazy language acquisition skills. And besides, unless you gene-spliced me with a cricket and a hyena there is no way I could ever pronounce what you just said.” 

Karkat ripped off the headphones. “I don’t know what a hyena is but fuck you very much anyway.” 

“So Biggie isn’t doing it for you, then. I knew you had no taste. What do you want instead? I could download you some Vanilla Ice, right after I’m done slamming my balls in the door over and over until my soul slides out my ass.” 

Karkat cheeks bloomed with a warmer frequency of grey. “Maybe the one with shitty taste here is you,” he snapped. He stomped to his desk. 

“Just tell me what _dekyus_ is. I hear you say it all the time.” 

“Fuck no. You’re not interested in my language other than to grimace at it with your stupid face —“ 

“I’m trying to learn it right now. What’s it look like I’m doing?” 

On his computer Karkat brought up the troll equivalent of iTunes. “ _Dekyus_ is you and everything you do and everything you like. If you looked up _dekyus_ in the Alternian-to-English dictionary you’d see a picture of you, surrounded by all your music and hobbies and belongings. Now shut up. We’re listening to my stuff now.” 

“Okay, I’m _dekyus_. What’s the troll word for hissy asshat, because that’s what you are.” 

Something high and eerie, a pack of violins all whining together, opened the track. The vocals chattered like a toad and a buzzsaw sharing a mating dance, but the poet’s lyrics possessed impeccable flow. Karkat returned to the couch, jamming himself into the crevice where the arm met the back. Dave scooted closer to him. 

“ _I keep my heart to the sky, I keep my ear to the ground, knowing them vultures can circle, but there’s poachers around. So I fly low, barely an inch above the surface, lie low—_ “ 

Karkat didn’t so much as sing as verbally trace the words, laying clunky English over the slithering Alternian. Dave watched his lips move. The flesh pursed and pillowed as he etched each verse. His lips pushed out as he formed the _p_ in _poachers_. Dave wet his mouth. 

Karkat’s head nodded as he slipped into the poem’s rhythm. _“—I get no sleep and I’m in so deep, I can’t ignore the problem. But you can’t blame the seed for what the forest taught him—”_

In a film, it would be the perfect moment to initiate a kiss. A cut-in of Karkat’s fingers tapping out a beat followed by an over the shoulder shot of Dave locked on Karkat, eyes soft with longing. The camera lens would steam up from all the chemistry overheating the soundstage. The director would be too breathless to call cut. Production assistants would faint. But somewhere amid the cadence of alien poetry, his shortness of breath, and the terror of embracing Karkat, Dave malfunctioned. He couldn’t close the distance between them. 

He molded his expression into a mask of indifference. The accompaniment burst. Up rose the chorus. 

_“I keep my eyes wide, as open as I’m allowed. Wise soldier, soulless, old as the hour, holding it down. A ghost as I coast through your town, colt raised with a cold handshake, cold look for the fan base, so shook. It’s that slow burn.”_

Dave sucked in a breath. Karkat’s rasping voice led him through the song line by line; his sense of rhythm wasn’t half bad once he forgot to be self-conscious. When the final chords died, Dave mumbled, “pretty good. You got any more of that?” 

Karkat faced him, eyebrows turned up. “You liked it?” 

“Yeah, sure, it was all right. I don’t think I understood much of the nuance. I mean it’s all pretty alien.” Dave then added, too quickly, “that’s not bad though.” 

Karkat gazed at him through slit eyes. “Are you being serious? I can't tell with you.” 

“When am I ever not serious?” 

Karkat rubbed the back of his neck. “I was going to just go through my literature textbook with you, but I thought since I introduced you to a purpleblood and a seadweller yesterday, I should start at the bottom of the caste spectrum today. Give the curriculum some balance.” He jerked a thumb at his computer. “That's a bronzeblood group,” he explained. “They took the collective adult title Doomtree. I may be a self-professed rap-ignorant tool, but I like their stuff.” 

“It sounded different.” 

“There are differences in culture from caste to caste. You’re right about the nuances. Like, there’re a lot of implication about fighting to rise about your station and the perseverance that takes. The ‘slow burn’ refers to that process but it’s also got a second meaning in that lowbloods have higher body temperatures than the aristocracy. I figured you might not catch that.” 

Dave nodded. “Yeah. Pretty alien.” 

Karkat stretched his arms over his head, cracking his back. His sweater rode up and Dave saw the expanse of smooth grey flesh where a bellybutton should have been. 

Dave cleared his throat. “Did you even have vultures on Alternia? Like in the song? I mean, after learning yesterday that there was troll Willy Wonka, troll Barbie, and troll Young Money I’ll believe anything at this point, but vultures seem like something so mundane that paradox space wouldn’t bother replicating them.” 

“We don’t. But we do have carriondactyls, which are kind of like vultures. I just said vultures so you wouldn’t interrupt me mid-recitation to ask for an explanation like a thickheaded wiggler.” 

“Are carriondactyls birds or dinosaurs?” 

Karkat blinked, a wry smirk tugging at his ever-present frown. “I don’t even know how to answer that question. What in the name of the Mother Grub’s bucket suppository is a dinosaur?” 

“What in the name of obscure xenological allusions is the Mother Grub?” 

Karkat groaned. “Can you be any more ignorant? Is it even possible? There is such an absence of knowledge in your skull that it’s actually taking up a negative amount of space. Your cranium is packed with dark matter. You’ve been living with trolls for how long and you still don’t even know the most basic building blocks of our culture.” 

“Kanaya explained it once but it pretty much went in one ear and out the other. When she brought up the incest slurry I sort of shut down. I’ve had to develop a defense mechanism for living with you people. If I explored every reference you make to troll reproduction I’d lose my fucking mind.” 

“Do you seriously want to know who the Mother Grub is?” 

“No, not really. Let’s get back to the real issue at hand here: you don’t know what a dinosaur is. That’s even sadder than the whole not-having-parents-being-raised-by-animals thing.” 

“Get off your high hoofbeast, you anthropocentric ocean of cum.” 

Dave gave Karkat a smile—a real smile, untainted by smarm. 

“What?” Karkat snapped. 

“Carriondactyl. Hoofbeast. I’m two hundred percent certain you make up at least half of these on the spot.” 

“Fuck you. It doesn’t sound so stupid in Alternian.” 

“How do you say those words in Alternian?” 

“You don’t get to know. You don’t give a shit about Alternia,” Karkat spat. 

Dave’s mouth opened, then shut. Karkat’s glare turned his stomach. He clicked his iPod on and off, searching for a reply, preferably not something an asshole would say. “See, you keep saying that I don't really care whenever I ask something about trolls, and then later when I’m still an ignorant tool, you call me culturally insensitive.” 

Karkat’s cheeks swelled with red. His eyes dropped to his knees, where he scowled at the frayed denim. Lips pursed, he sighed. “ _Nreshnilya_ and _klaghur_ ,” he said. “ _Nresh_ is carrion, _nilya_ is fingers, _kla_ is hoof, and _ghur_ is a classification of animal. Now are you happy? Are we done playing preschool? Show me more shitty human poetry.” 

Dave scrolled through the playlist he made for the lesson. His thumb rolled over Tupac, Blackstreet, Salt n’ Pepa. “ _Ghur_ is a classification,” he mused. “ _Kla_ is hoof. So, is _klaghur_ a category or is it just one animal?” 

Karkat’s scowl deepened. “It’s a catch-all term.” 

“So what would you call something with hooves if you wanted to get specific? Like, what if you had a zebra and a donkey but you only wanted to refer to one of them?” 

Dave could have harvested Karkat’s exasperation and sold it in bottles labeled turpentine, it was so bitter. 

“What the hell is a donkey? Actually, fuck it. I don't even care. Are you going to make me listen to another one of your songs or not?” Karkat fell back against the sofa, arms crossed, thin-muscled frame almost disappearing into the cushions. His fingers clenched into fists. _Nilya_. 

Dave clicked his iPod off. “I don’t have anything else prepared,” he said. “What do you have?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dekyus shu kash vehek -_ This bullshit makes no sense
> 
>   
>  [Doomtree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnxOBxGER2Q)


	3. Whilli Wonkha

“You and Karkat seem like you’re at each other’s throats a little less,” Rose remarked. 

Dave ignored her and chewed his sandwich. Headphones pulled down over his ears, he sat at the table listening to one of the artists Karkat recommended. His elbows propped his body up in a slouch that rendered him into the physical incarnation of Don’t Give a Fuck. A small smile broke across Rose’s black lips. She reclined on the common room’s loveseat, feet tucked up beneath her. In her lap she balanced a teacup. 

“And you’ve been spending a lot of time in his room,” she added. “Kanaya peeked in and saw you both on the couch, sitting in a way that she described as canoodling.” 

Dave tugged his headphones off his ears and craned around the gramophone to shoot Rose an unimpressed stare. “I’m being multicultural. Can’t two bros enjoy a little xenophilialogical exploration without snippy bookshrews and fashionharpies coming to sniff them out? Not on this meteor, apparently.” 

“Xenological,” said Rose.

Food residue gummed up the inside of Dave’s mouth. “What?” 

“The word you meant to use is ‘xenological’. You used ‘xenophilialogical’ which means... nothing, actually. It’s not a real word. But it sounds to me like you knew you wanted to employ ‘xenological’ to describe your platonic dalliances with our alien friend, but on the way out of your subconscious it became entangled with ‘xenophilia’.” Rose smiled. “Which is something else entirely.” 

“God fucking damn it.” 

“It’s almost as though you took the two words and pressed them close together, and held them in that tight embrace, waiting for the portmanteau to manifest in their intimate union, before thrusting one into the other—“ 

“I’m eating, for fuck’s sake.” 

Dave’s pastrami turned to dust on his tongue. Rose’s mild gaze obliterated his poker face and in its place a blush crept into his cheeks. 

“So what kind of shenanigans do you get up to?” 

“We sit on his sofa and listen to rap.” Dave waved his sandwich. Bits of pastrami flew across the table. “Sorry to spoil your gay interspecies star-crossed lovers theory. Looks like you’ll have to turn elsewhere to find inspiration for your wizard fanfiction. Young magician’s apprentice, Davidus Gluteus Maximus will not be tramping into the forbidden forest on winged feet to frolic with his forbidden lover, the nubile and cantankerous satyr, and embrace in a forbidden union, followed by roughly three and a half pages of unusually competent and satisfying sex despite both parties claiming to be virgins.” 

Rose sipped her tea. Her expression was trapped between pity and a glint of amusement. “That scenario is quite elaborate. Did you come up with all that right now or was this fantasy imagined ahead of time?” 

Dave slapped his sandwich down on its plate. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, covering a laugh. “I won’t tease anymore. What are you two planning for today’s platonic bonding?” 

“We’re going to watch some Alternian movie. And then after that, we’re going to watch _Alien_. Karkat wants to know what a xenomorph is.” 

Her mouth dropped open. She fell back against the sofa, breathless and grinning into her cup of tea. 

“Granted, I said I wouldn’t tease you,” she said, “but you’re showing him a film that is about interspecies male-on-male mating. There is so much I could do with this that I’m at a loss for words. My wit is so overloaded that it fails me. You’ve finally done it, brother. You’ve short- circuited my snark software.” 

Dave’s stomach flipped. “You’ve got a sick mind, Lalonde.” 

“I’m merely pointing out that you may want to select a different movie in light of the circumstances. Perhaps _Predator_ , if you want to stick with the sci-fi theme. _Treasure Planet_ is also excellent, as well as tame. But I would avoid _Alien._ You might give Karkat the impression that your taste in film is a little heavy-handed, if not disturbed.” 

“I’m disturbed? Who’s the one saying that _Alien_ is about xeno homo lovin’? Put down the flask, Freud. I’m cutting you off.” 

Rose leaned forward. “Ridley Scott used H. R. Giger’s artwork as a springboard for developing the xenomorph because he wanted to draw from the illustration’s sexual overtones. And when developing the xenomorph suit he chose to give the alien a vaguely human shape to preserve its sensuality. Additionally, the writers intended for the facehugger to suggest the trauma of oral rape. The xenomorph is driven by purely carnal urges, to mate and to eat. And its _head_ is a _penis_.” 

She pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back on her velvet throne to drink in Dave’s blush as though his mortification were a gin and tonic. "I’m sorry, but I’m not making baseless accusations here,” she continued. “Furthermore, the xenomorph is an arthopod that serves a single matriarch. Much like a certain number of our friends. You have to admit, it’s a little suggestive.” 

Dave said nothing. He shoved his headphones back over his ears and let Javaan Rudaba drown out his sister’s smirking psychoanalysis. The seadweller accent was like a New Yorker fused with an Australian. He consulted the word-for-word translation he’d alchemized by combining Karkat’s textbook with an Oxford English dictionary. 

Her voice rattled. “ _These bitches is bad, but JR is worse. These bitches is sad, but lately it works. I'm crazy with math, add me a purse, plus you a hearse, minus that church...”_

He scribbled a note in his journal to ask Karkat later. _Church equals church of psycho clowns? JR is dissing clown church? Dissing Onikka Marraj?_

“You know what?” Rose set her teacup in its saucer. She unscrewed a flask and poured a trickle into the earl grey. “Now that I think about it, why shouldn’t ‘xenophilialogical’ be a real word? We’re the last remaining English-speakers. Not to mention gods. We can bend the language to our whim. And now with Kanaya and me in a committed relationship, we’ll need a word like ‘xenophilialogist’ to describe the people who are going to lose sleep wondering how peg A fits into slot B.” 

“Okay. Bye Rose.” 

Dave gathered up his headphones and his sandwich and escaped through the transportalizer. Her cackles followed him. She’d done a number on his appetite; his longing for the thick layers of pastrami and sourdough bread—which had taken him weeks to alchemize— shriveled in his belly. 

TG: yo  
TG: want a sandwich  
TG: or i guess i should ask do you want the meat in the sandwich  
TG: while you squint in derision and scrape off everything on the sandwich that makes it a sandwich  
TG: and scoff at me for eating pickles and lettuce  
TG: or as you like to call them  
TG: lawn clippings

CG: ARE YOU A FUCKING MIND READER NOW?  
CG: I WAS JUST ABOUT TO GO DOWN TO THE NUTRITION BLOCK. YOU SAVED ME THE TROUBLE OF TRYING TO SNEAK AROUND KANAYA.

TG: why are you avoiding kanaya

CG: BECAUSE THESE LAST FEW METAPHORICAL NIGHTS SHE HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT HELPFUL. YOU KNOW HOW SHE GETS WHEN SHES BEING HELPFUL.  
CG: MY LIFE IS NO LONGER MY OWN.  
CG: WE ARE ALL JUST MEAT PUPPETS TO HER.

TG: thats a little harsh man  
TG: did she ask you to model a pinafore for her or what  
TG: what was the straw that broke the camels back

CG: I DON’T EVEN WANT TO GO INTO IT. BRING ME THE UGLY SANDWICH SO I CAN SALVAGE THE EDIBLE PART.

Karkat dissected the food, first removing the bread before casting aside the pickles and the lettuce. He tolerated the mustard. They settled on the sofa for interspecies movie night, Alternian pick first, and Earth film second. As it turned out, Troll Willy Wonka—Whilli Wonkha—was a horror film based on true historical events. 

The plot was thus: _A rustblood receives a mysterious invitation to the palace-slash-candy-factory of a reclusive and powerful highblood, a place where “nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out". Charli—called “Bucket”, a cruel nickname from his days as a brothel worker—seeks to climb out of poverty by completing the mad benefactor’s trials, and ultimately inheriting the Candy Palace along with all the wealth therein. His competitors feature members from each of the highest castes._

_Whilli Wonkha, a towering troll draped in aggressively purple robes and painted sorta like Gamzee, leads his potential successors through the various floors of the candy factory, assisted by the army of orange-skinned alien slaves he keeps cloistered underground to operate the machinery as well as perform song and dance numbers for his amusement. In a series of challenges reminiscent of the Saw film franchise, Wonkha slaughters the highbloods one by one. The indigoblood falls into a river of boiling chocolate and is sucked up through a series of pipes where he suffocates. Wonkha tricks the purpleblood_ —“she’s the obvious choice for his successor”, Karkat explained. “It’s a huge plot twist that she’s the next to die”— _into eating a poison of his creation that fills her body with toxic gas until she explodes. The seadweller dies when she falls into a garbage incinerator._

“The two lowest bloodcastes are the last ones standing,” Karkat whispered. “Do you have any idea what kind of hoops the filmmaker had to jump through to get this past the censors? If it weren’t for the fact that this is based on a true story, there’s no way he could’ve swung it. Granted, this film was made more than two hundred sweeps ago. It was a different time, but still. Even today shit like this is kinda contested.” 

_When the ceruleanblood disintegrates in an experimental transportalizer, Charli appears to be the winner. The rustblood, the kid from the bottommost caste, proves his worth and triumphs over his betters. He is free to claim the prize that is rightfully his._

Dave almost breathed easy, but when the musical score continued to build rather than release, he braced himself against the sofa. 

_Whilli Wonkha discovers Charli stole one of his top-secret gobstoppers to sell in case he could find a way to escape his maniacal torturehive._

“Oh shit,” Dave whispered.

Karkat gripped Dave’s elbow. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” 

Dave seized the chance to loop their arms together. Karkat’s breath ghosted over his neck. 

_Charli tries to run. He retraces his path through the factory, searching for the elevator he passed earlier. Wonkha pursues him like a black mamba. He weaves through the labyrinth of halls and whirring conveyor belts, languid and certain his prey has no escape. Charli throws himself into the elevator, but Wonkha leaps in just before the doors clang shut._

Dave shuddered at the final scene. Charli, still breathing, still conscious, his body a ruin of snapped bone and raw flesh, curled on the floor. The camera focuses on his fear-blown pupils. Wonkha horns appear in the reflection just before the screen goes black. 

The boys exhaled shaky breaths. Karkat pulled out of Dave’s grasp. 

“Okay. Holy shit,” Dave blathered. “Human Willy Wonka is totally different than this torture porn extravaganza. You said this was a true story? Holy mother of fuck, that’s horrifying.” 

“Well, shit, forgive me. You said you didn’t want to watch one of my—and I quote—boring-ass crime-against-comedy quadrant flicks. Next time we’ll glare at a blank screen together.” 

Karkat removed the filmgrub from its nest beneath the TV. He plucked the connector (a long needle at the end of a cable) from its jack (a cloaca-like opening on its hind end) before returning it to its terrarium to munch on lettuce and dry feed with its fellows. Dave gagged. Karkat dusted his hands off. 

“No man, I loved it,” Dave said, dumping a greasy popcorn bowl on the ground. “We got to show this to John when we meet up. He’ll go nuts over it. We need to have some kind of bizarro movie marathon where we watch the troll version of a film first and then follow up with the human version, do a side by side comparison. We can make it an interspecies date night, full of cultural exploration and clumsy xeno groping. Rose will bring Kanaya, Jade can have a platonic date with Terezi, and we can round up a ghost version of Vriska to keep John company. Human-troll sloppy makeouts and-slash-or chaste cuddles for all to enjoy.” 

Karkat shuddered. “Oh fuck, don't remind me. Between Rose and Kanaya, you and _Terezi_... Let’s not even go there. I never want to hear you say ‘xeno groping’ ever again.” 

Something sank in Dave’s chest.

“And I almost succeeded in forgetting that _thing_ between Vriska and John,” Karkat continued. “Thanks a lot for reminding me.” 

“So,” Dave mumbled, “Still not down with the interspecies canoodling, I take it?” 

Karkat barked a laugh as he shut off the television.

Dave tapped a finger on the armrest. “Kanaya and Rose get along just fine.” 

“Kanaya has always had awful judgment in terms of red romance. Did you know she used to have a crush on Vriska? I mean, fuck. She’s my best friend but Kanaya will get flushed for any girl with poor self-control. It’s like a fetish.” 

Dave shrugged. A weight like hot lead poured into his gut. “Fine, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be happy with their xenolesbian affair.” 

“Dave, our concepts of relationships are just different,” Karkat explained. “When I read those romance novels to you, you always had the weirdest questions, which, I guess, to you were perfectly reasonable questions to ask. But sometimes I just couldn’t fucking believe I had to teach you about some really basic shit.” 

“Given the chance, Rose can learn anything,” said Dave. “Don't compare us just because we're both human. She’s way more studious than me.” 

Karkat furrowed his brow, and for a moment, he had no retort. He looked away. “I get that.” 

“Then what’s with the doubt?” Dave struggled to keep his voice from tipping into dejection. “You think she and Kanaya will fall apart because Rose doesn’t know every minutia of troll etiquette?” 

“Well, if not that, then the question of—fuck, I mean, c’mon Strider— _incompatible biology_ will throw a monkey wrench in their relationship. I honestly don't get Kanaya at all in that respect. She’s into some strange shit. Like I said, she’s got fetishes out the wastechute.” 

Karkat arched his back as though trying to pull away from the whole concept. Out of the corner of Dave's vision the door tempted him. But he couldn’t leave. They were going to watch _Alien_ next. 

He leaned on one of the armrests, while Karkat reclined on the other. Dave didn’t close the distance between them. 

Karkat fidgeted. He crossed and uncrossed of his legs, his restless fingers tapped along his grey jeans, and he swallowed his own words every few minutes. Dave watched Karkat's adam's apple bob as they were forced back down his throat. Before the movie even began Dave mapped out a series of retreat strategies. When to get up for the bathroom. When to go make popcorn. During which scenes did he want to be out of the room? He rubbed the back of his neck and stole glances at the door every few minutes. 

On a different day, he and Karkat could’ve watched the movie without so much as a blush between them. Maybe Dave could’ve pulled him close during the tense moments. Maybe he could’ve run a hand up his thigh. Nuzzled his neck, kissed the pulse, and listened to his breath hitch when he licked into his ear. Or maybe just held his hand. 

Dave stared at his lap for most of the film. During Whilli Wonkha, every ten minutes Karkat snapped at him to shut up. As the Nostromo loomed on screen, his lips sealed shut. Before the facehugger engulfed its victim he excused himself to go make another batch of popcorn. He returned just in time to see the offspring come slithering out of a hole in what’s-his-face’s chest and absconding, blood-slick, to pupate in some cranny of the ship. Dave avoided Karkat’s gaze. 

From the opening scene to the final credits, Dave cringed. 

“Okay, I admit,” said Karkat, “that was pretty good. Aside from the fact that the xenomorph was obviously a human in a suit.” 

After a hundred and seventeen minutes of boiling, the lid popped off Dave’s mouth.

“Yeah, man, I don't know. It wasn't as good as I remembered, but maybe that’s because I’m a little more grown up now. Wiser. More film savvy. Did I ever tell you I used to be really interested in photography? I had a camcorder and everything. I was pretty into it. I thought I was going to be the next Ben Stiller, I guess,”Dave babbled. “Or the next Ridley Scott. He put the guy in the suit on purpose so that he’d still look fuckable, I guess—“ 

“ _What_.” 

“—but I think you can watch it without seeing the monster as an intergalactic gigolo. In fact, I think Rose was lying. I don't think he was sensual at all. Or maybe it's a she. That's another weird thing. It’s kind of both male and female but also neither, right? Like, I think they’re all female? Because they’ve got a queen. But maybe they’re male consorts. Or neither. Hell, maybe they’ve got both kinds of—anyway, Jesus, the facehugger. I mean, holy crap. I feel devirginized whenever I see that thing, you know? I never get used to it.” 

Karkat’s ears swiveled. “Did it really freak you out that much? I mean, yeah, the movie was tense but not pants-shitting scary.” 

“Who says I’m freaked out?” 

“Your hands are shaking.” 

Dave closed his fingers to stifle the tremble. “Yeah, shit. Shit, I guess it did freak me out. I was still reeling from Whilli Wonkha. Man, I’m a delicate flower. I’m not made to handle so many horror fests at once. Listen. I’m gonna go, unless you want to talk about the movie some more...?” 

Karkat shrugged. “Uh, I guess not really. It was cool but there wasn't any romance, so there’s nothing to actually dig into...I mean, maybe something pale between Ripley and Lambert... Actually, there was definitely something pale between them—” 

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Dave stumbled towards the door, almost face-planting when his foot caught on the table leg. He recovered and turned to face Karkat’s frown. “But if you wanted to, technically, you could ship the xenomorph with the everyone.” 

Karkat’s brows furrowed. Dave made a dying sound that wasn’t so much as a laugh as it was a cry for help. He backed out of Karkat's block. “Anyway, I gotta go.” 

He hovered to his room. He found that walking required too much commitment, of which his levels were at an all time low. He threw his cape over his turntables and collapsed on his bed without bothering the kick his sneakers off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [Javaan Rudaba](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnhyFeRJzSI)


	4. Saafir

Dave rolled across his playing card sheets, groaning as he jammed his face into his alchemized Troll-to-English dictionary. 

"Fuck. Jay... Jay... oh my fucking god, what _sound_ is this?" He puckered his lips and laced a buzz in with his words. "Day... jay... _dze. Dze dze."_

The bed creaked as he stuffed his feet into his sneakers and strolled into his bathroom. He examined his reflection. " _Dze dze,_ Karkat. Yo, _Dze dze,_ Karkat _. Henya?_ " Dave schooled his expression in the art of looking suave, leaning his head back and quirking a single eyebrow. He primped his hair, rearranging the strands until his 'do was anime-perfect. Nothing could be done for his smile. No matter how he tilted it he still looked smug. 

Dave transportalized into the common room, where Kanaya and Rose cuddled on the loveseat, knees squeezed together as they balanced a novel between them. Kanaya read the text out loud, slow and enunciated to the letter, while Rose watched her lips move. 

“ _Ne guyurk Niyobe alyat mebeth, kiyidth ma dza Crotal shreya_ —“ 

Rose touched a finger to the page. “ _La mukkya... kiyidth_?” 

“ _Kidth_ is tremble, present tense. _Kiyidth_ is trembled, past tense.” 

“So all together it says...” Rose chewed her tongue. “...Though Niyobe understood was dream... understood _it_ was _a_ dream, she trembled at Crotal’s... _shreya. Shreya?_ Teeth?” 

Kanaya tapped the two needles that protruded from under her lip. “ _Shreya_ are the longish fangs at the front of your mouth, on both upper and lower jaws. All trolls have them but on some people they are much more pronounced than on others. Such as rainbow drinkers.” 

Hunkered down at the grand oak table on the other side of the room, Karkat glowered at them from behind a fortress of books as he tore through a bag of fried beetles. Greasy carapace crumbs and leg segments sprinkled his lap. 

Dave swaggered into their midst. “Well, look at my fine meteor friends all gathered together in the common room. Jay… j… _d_ ze _dze,_ Kanaya, Rose, looking good. _Dze dze,_ Karkat. _Henya_? I’m not half bad myself.” 

Karkat’s brow shot up. 

“I see you’ve learned some new words,” said Rose. Kanaya glanced from her girlfriend to Dave, then from Dave to Karkat. 

“I’m thirsty for knowledge.” Dave shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a renaissance man. A scholar. A jack-of-all-trades.” He peeked at Karkat out of the corner of his eye. “Xenocultural and xenolinguistic studies are just a fraction of my interests.” 

There was no trace of a frown on Karkat's mouth. Dave's chest swelled. Three cherry red sevens clicked into place. A victory jingle chimed. Dave was buried in his jackpot winnings and every coin was embossed with Karkat’s neutral face. 

Karkat crossed his arms. “Where’d you learn that?” 

“Oh, you know. Just picked it up." 

Karkat squinted. Kanaya caught his eye and made a fluttering gesture with her ears that seemed to be some kind of tacit question, to which Karkat replied with a frown and lowering his horns. 

“So, anyway,” Dave murmured, blinking from one troll to the other. “Are we hanging out today?” 

Something thick lingered in the air. Karkat crumpled his cellophane bag, all the beetles either consumed or scattered in pieces across the carpet beneath his chair. 

“I thought I’d try looking for Gamzee today,” Karkat said. “Make sure he’s all right.”

“Oh.” Dave slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Do you want help?” 

“No.” Karkat pushed back from the table. “You might scare him off. I’ll see you later.” He dismissed all three of his friends with a wave of his hand. The transportalizer zapped him away. 

Dave chewed his lip, shifting from one foot to the other while Rose and Kanaya’s collective gaze prodded the back of his head. He whirled to face them. “So what are you two doing,” he asked. 

“Reading one of Kanaya’s favorite rainbow drinker novels,” Rose said. Dave took a seat in the armchair across from them.  


Rose eyed him. “Are you joining us?”

“Yeah, is that cool?” 

She laced her fingers. “Dave, this is a Rose-and-Kanaya activity. Do you remember what we talked about?” 

Dave rolled and unrolled his cape around his fist. “Yeah... Rose-and-Kanaya activities are not Rose-and-Kanaya-and-Dave activities.” He protested, “but Karkat was here and you didn’t kick him out.” 

“Karkat was being quiet and keeping a respectful distance from the Rose-and-Kanaya activity sphere,” Kanaya explained. 

“I can be quiet and respectful.” 

Both girls snorted. Dave scowled. 

Kanaya activated her sylladex. “Dave, would you like me to give you something to listen to since Karkat is busy? You can borrow my music grub if you like.” An ice blue maggot about the length of Kanaya’s hand, blind and webbed with ocher veins, hopped into her palm along with a set of headphones with a needle plug dangling from the cord. Dave winced at the creature’s rear end. The thing squirmed warm and soft in Kanaya’s fingers. 

“Sure,” he muttered. “I’ll give it a shot.” 

Kanaya explained how the beast “worked”. She—the music grub—was voice activated. Kanaya provided a few basic voice commands to pause, rewind, and shuffle. Dave carried the creature to his room where he arranged her on his bedside table after (very, very, very gently) plugging in the headphones. The grub wiggled as though waking up out of a nap. 

He mumbled, “Uh, so, I know Kanaya is normally the one giving the orders but she pimped you out to me, so... Okay, uh. Um.” He retrieved the Troll-to-English dictionary and skimmed through the pages. “ _Sogaara_... uh... music. Music. Music. _Sranti_. _Sogaara sranti..._? _Sranti sogaara?_ ” 

The grub cooed like a friendly sausage. “ _Mukkya rehkba ad nord vas_ ,” a tinny voice asked through the headphones. 

“Um, play... shit, I don't even know... how about I just put you on shuffle. Uh... _rrul?_ ” 

She chirped. Mellow notes hummed in his ears. Dave cracked the Troll-to-English dictionary, popped his rap journal out of his sylladex, and leaned back against the headboard with a pencil in hand. 

He sighed, “please, please don’t be about rainbow vampires.”

A man's voice ambled in to join the beat. “ _Led ker la ker anorovsham trol. Shel dogara..._ ”

“ _Kaat_ ,” Dave said, just as Kanaya taught him. The song paused. “ _Vlut_.” The rap returned to the beginning. The beat swelled anew.

The artist crooned, _“Led ker...”_

Dave scribbled the first word in his rap journal. _Led._ He flipped the dictionary to the L section. 

Several days later, when Karkat claimed he was in no mood to translate, Dave swooped in to fill the lesson plan’s void. With a stack of printer paper, a few fossils from his collection of dead shit, a little perseverance, and no less than three mental breakdowns, Dave alchemized a wealth of information on paleontology ranging from kindergarten pop-up books to grad student texts. 

The time had come for the Dinosaur Date. 

Karkat flipped the page to a diagram containing a variety of pterasaurs. “Were dinosaurs all lizards? Was Earth just lizard central for millions of years? What about humans?” 

“Humans didn’t exist yet,” he explained. “We didn’t show up until a fuckmillion years after most of these things were killed by a big fucking asteroid. After that all these little rat things started reproducing like fornication was going out of style and they got bigger and bigger and then bam. Humans happened.” 

Karkat gawked in eyes-wide, mouth-twisted horror. “Humans cannot come from rats. Just when I thought your species couldn’t be any more appalling.” 

“Well, there were monkeys in there too at some point. A rat didn’t just one day poop out Adam and Eve. It was a process. Now how about you get off your high Alternian hoofbeast, because I’m perceptive enough to notice how buggy you are. Let’s hear about your distant ancestors.” 

He snapped, “I’ll have you know the evolution of my species was a graceful genetic ballet starting from our antediluvian predecessors all the way down to the excellence you see sitting before you —“ Dave snorted. “—and we had no moronic missteps such as becoming rats or monkeys at any point. Our progress was a smooth ride through the millennia in which improvement stacked on top of improvement, until natural selection hit a wall and could find nothing else to perfect. And thus trollkind was hatched.” 

Dave reclined on the sofa, knees spread. “You sound pretty defensive, Vantas. Now that you’re blatantly overselling it I’m seriously curious about this mystery ancestor.” 

A growl boiled in Karkat's throat. Not a growl like a little kid imitating the family dog, but a true snarl heard only in nature documentaries and horror films. Lust slapped Dave upside the head. He closed his legs as casually, grappling against the heat rushing through him administered directly from Karkat’s mouth. 

Dave swallowed. “So, humans are to apes, as trolls are to...?” 

Karkat drew himself up, eyes gleaming with trollish pride. “Ground wasps.” 

“Holy _mother_ of _fuck_.” Dave laughed until he snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. I can’t believe you were bagging on humans about the rodent thing when wasps are the most _insanely evil_ creatures ever spawned by evolution.” 

Spitting indignation replaced the genuine hurt on Karkat’s face so fast that only a high-speed camera could’ve caught his kicked-kitten eyes. “You can go fuck yourself on every sharp, rusted, tetnus-y object in all of the universes. Wasps are a sophisticated social species, you ratfuck.” 

“All right, no need to throw a fit. My people aren’t much better. Proto-humans started out looking like they got hit by the ugly truck, then the driver put it in reverse and backed over them again.” Dave dug up a representation of humanity's ancient forefather, Homo erectus. He pointed to the protruding brow. “See?” 

Karkat tilted his head, and snickered, “I see no difference.” 

Dave bit back a smile. “Fucker." He maneuvered around the table until he was facing Karkat. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about Rose and Kanaya.” 

Karkat’s smile froze. “What about them?” 

“With Kanaya teaching her Alternian and stuff, Rose is showing me up.” Dave shook his head. “I can’t stand it, man. What if you helped me learn Alternian?” He sounded too eager. He added, “so that I can listen to your rap without needing your droning voice to guide me along.” 

“Hell no.” 

“Why the fuck not?” 

“Because you’ll be an asshole about it. You’ll just make fun of how it sounds because it’s not grunty and slow like your chimp chatter. It’d be a useless exercise in navigating your cultural myopia, which will only end in my frustrated screams hurled into the void.” 

Dave clapped his hands and rolled his shoulders. “You want a student who can do more than just parrot back what you tell him, right? You want him to go the extra mile, yeah? Well, Dave Strider ain’t no _sommeshar_. He’s got _raksid_ and his brain’s broca’s area—that’s a hominid's language center, yo—is motherfucking full of mad _shunkan_.” 

Karkat’s brows shot up. 

Dave rested his arms across the back of the sofa. “Just been brushing up on my classical poetry. Got my troll schoolfeeding on with my man Saafir.” 

“How did you listen to Saafir,” Karkat asked.

“Kanaya let me borrow her music grub. No big thing. Don’t look so surprised.”

“Did she recite it for you...?”

“I figured it out on my own. Made myself a Troll-to-English dictionary. Then I just went to town.” 

Karkat squinted. “You translated the entire song? On your own?” 

"From start to finish. It took me three days. Would you like to discuss the themes in the poem? Maybe we should debate the artist’s internal dichotomy. Or we could dig into his self-awareness regarding his own flaws and examine his willingness to acknowledge his arrogance. This poem is chock full of raw, meaty, emotional grit. I found it to be pretty damn stimulating, if I do say so myself. But I’m just an Earth monkey. What do I know?” 

Karkat's head tilted, lip curled back to bare his ( _shreya_. Fangs at the front of the mouth). He crossed his arms and cleared his throat. “ _Shunkan_ ” he said, “isn’t a noun. It’s an adjective. You can’t be full of _shunkan_ or have a _shunkan_. You are _shunkan_. Same with _sommeshar_. Adjective, not a noun.” 

Dave pursed his lips. "See. I need to know things like that or else I could fuck up and use it incorrectly.” 

Karkat squinted. “You’re serious?” 

Dave shook his head. “Every time I ask for something you get all paranoid, you cagey little shit. I’ve been a good student so far, haven’t I? Have some faith, dude. I’ll even let you plan out the curriculum. You can draw us a schedule grid and micromanage everything. I know you get off on that.” 

“Why?” 

Dave sighed. “Why what?” 

“You suddenly just now want to learn Alternian. Where was this intense interest two and a half years ago, when you told Rose, and I quote, ‘I don’t have plans to make conversation at a stuffy cicada cocktail party, so let them speak English’.” 

Dave frowned. Over the span of their journey, he cracked more than a couple insect-related (and incest-related) jokes. 

“Can’t a guy just be politely interested in his foreign friend’s language without having to suffer through a formal fucking inquisition?” Dave twisted his cape around his hand. “Because maybe I think you're right. It's kinda messed up you had to learn English but Rose and I still haven't learned Alternian. Also, it’s been pretty okay hanging out with you so far," Dave added. "We should chill together more. I don’t know why we never did it before.” 

“Because you’re an insufferable prick.”

"Yeah, see? Look at how much we have in common.” 

Karkat worked his jaw back and forth before relaxing against the sofa. He muttered, "I like hanging out with you too." 

Dave's heart leapt into his throat. He looked down at his lap. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Karkat's hand resting on the sofa, palm down. Dave inched his fingers across the stained cushion until they covered Karkat's. 

Both boys stared down at the overlapping digits as though they'd never seen anything like them before. Dave inhaled. He raised his other hand to Karkat's cheek, lifted his bewildered face, and delivered a kiss to the corner of his mouth. His shades knocked against Karkat's nose. For two breaths Dave held his ground. During those two breaths he tasted the meat Karkat ate for lunch and inhaled his scent and sucked on a patch of soft skin. Afraid to read Karkat's reaction, he closed his eyes as he pulled away. 

A fist snatched the front of Dave's godtier pajamas, and tugged him back. Karkat's lips interlocked with his like gears. Karkat pressed softly first, with less than an ounce of pressure. Then he pushed into Dave. 

Karkat's arms wrapped around his shoulders. Under Dave's skin his nerves burned. He crawled closer, nudging Karkat back against the armrest. He dragged his tongue along the seam of his lips and pushed into the heat. Fangs raked the underside of his tongue. He settled on top of Karkat, one foot still on the ground while the rest of his body enveloped him. 

His hands rolled up and down Karkat's sides, lingering over the parallel dips he found on either side of his ribs. Karkat wriggled and through a deep, tongue-sliding kiss, he gave a muffled laugh at the light fingers teasing his skin. Dave slipped a hand under Karkat's sweater. He investigated the dips, discovering satin scar tissue. His thumb smoothed over one of the marks. He met no objection; Karkat was pliant and panting and red. 

A chirp, soft as a baby bird, popped from Karkat's throat and Dave choked on a groan. He dropped a kiss on his neck. With the body writhing beneath him, his cock swelled. Karkat's mystery meat did its own merry gig in his jeans, twitching against Dave's leg. He ground his erection against Karkat's thigh in return. 

Karkat's eyes widened. A hiss welled up in his throat, clattering like a rattlesnake threat. Something Pleistocene shivered at the back of Dave's skull; an ancient tree-dweller—one who feared sharp teeth and sounds that echo in the dead of night—grabbed hold of the reins to Dave's brain. His heart jolted. He flinched away from the rows of fangs hovering near his neck. 

Karkat shoved him back, mouth spilling guttural clicks and eyes screaming. Dave tumbled off the sofa. His shoulder struck the coffee table as he crumpled to the floor. 

"What the fuck," Dave gasped. 

"You need to go." 

Dave gaped up at him, crouched on his hands and knees. His shoulder ached. "What did I do?" 

Karkat grabbed a pillow and hugged it to his abdomen. He stared at his knees, jaw clenched. “ _Sayard vas dza vayark ker._  I told you to leave." 

Dave pushed his shades up his nose. "Fine." He hoisted himself to his feet, brushing the grit from the floor off his hands. Karkat's slit pupils tracked him as he crossed the room. Dave bristled under his glare. "Whatever," he muttered. 

The door locked behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  [Saafir](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e05XZ_iRWmE)
> 
> Translation notes:
> 
> Dze dze = Hi/Yo etc. [slang]
> 
> Henya? = What's Up?/How's it going?/ [slang]
> 
> La mukkya ______? = What is ______?
> 
> Sogaara = Please
> 
> Sranti = Music
> 
> Mukkya rehkba ad nord vas? = Which artist would you like? (Literal translation: What musician would please you?)
> 
> Rrul = Randomize [imperative]
> 
> Kaat = Stop [imperative]
> 
> Vlut = Rewind [imperative] (Literal translation: Furl)
> 
> Sommeshar = Wishy-washy
> 
> Raksid = Style
> 
> Shunkan = Effective (Dave misunderstands its connotations. He thinks it means something like 'formidable', when really it's more like 'basically useful in the way that it is meant to be used', which still works within the context he's applying it, but sounds sort of pathetic.)
> 
> Sayard vas dza vayark ker = You heard what I said


	5. Whoops He Fucking did it Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotional constipation vs Emotional incontinence. Who will triumph in this battle of wills?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexy nonsense in this chapter. I'd like to take the time to remind everyone that everybody here is over 18. I know you all probably don't give a shit one way or the other but I enjoy repeating myself.

Karkat retreated into hiding. For days, texts went unanswered while the sore spot on Dave's arm swelled into a black bruise. When pressed for information, Kanaya claimed she knew nothing while she blushed and glanced everywhere but Dave's face. 

Dave knocked on Karkat’s door. "Open up. I want to talk." He waited five seconds before barging in uninvited. 

“Karkat,” he called. 

The television's dim light illuminated the sofa. The screen was paused on a tangle of grey limbs. Not dove grey, but dark, charcoal, adult troll grey. Two men, face to face, one looming over the other. Dave stepped closer. He absorbed the details; the lack of clothes, the beads of sweat, the gasping mouths. A thrill shivered up his spine. Dave glanced at the grub sitting beneath the television, which displayed a tiny black spade stamped on its head. Dave’s tongue went dry.

“Karkat,” he called again. “You in here?”

He glanced into Karkat’s darkened ablution block and peeked inside his recuperacoon before returning to the television. The remote sat of the coffee table. He touched 'play'. The scene snapped into action. Dave tried to watch it as though it were a nature documentary; He laced his fingers, studying the two trolls like they were praying mantises rubbing against one another in a jungle canopy or komodo dragons writhing on an Indonesian riverbed. Intimate moments between nonhuman organisms caught on camera. Purely scientific. 

His cock thought otherwise. Heat swelled between his legs. Dave fell into the scene mid-action, where Karkat left off. One troll crawled up the other’s body, licking his bare chest. Chitinous armor lay discarded on the floor. Around them were rows of slime cocoons and weapons lockers, some kind of military setting. Growling. Clicking. Chirping. 

Cheesy porn dialogue didn’t sound any less cheesy in an alien language. Dave fixed his gaze to the spot where the first troll’s thigh overlapped with his lover’s hip. Behind that intersection, the key to Dave’s sexual fantasies lay in wait; the mystery meat. 

“Come on,” Dave muttered. “Move. Vámanos.”

The bottom troll bucked against his brawny partner and wrapped a hand around his throat.

The guy on top backhanded the smaller troll. The scene swiftly descended into something a little more aggressive than Dave’s liking. And a little kinkier than expected. Dave’s eyes widened when troll number one pulled a whip out of a drawer. He grabbed the remote to turn it off, but then the camera panned back down toward their pelvises. The blue troll pried his partner’s legs apart and... 

“Dave, what the fuck?” 

In a hysterical move unworthy of a truly cool dude, Dave threw himself across the coffee table and ripped the grub out of the jack. The film flickered out of sight. 

Karkat stood in the doorway, holding a plate of raw pastrami in one hand and a can of tab in the other. He barred his teeth. “What the hell are you doing?" 

Dave climbed to his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Nothing,” he mumbled. 

Karkat waved an arm at the screen. “Is this something you do when I’m not around? Creep into my room on all fours like an animal and slobber all over my movies?” 

Dave rocked back on his heels. “Okay. There is really no recovering from this. Can we just agree that it never happened?” 

“I fucking doubt it. I’m going to need steel wool to scrub clean the image of you groping your genitalia. And I’m going to need to burn that couch.” 

“Okay.” Dave snorted. “First of all, I wasn’t jerking off. Keep your fantasies to yourself. You wish I got all hot and bothered over whatever the fuck is between your legs. Second of all, all I did was turn on the TV out of curiosity. I wasn’t expecting a shot of freaky-nasty troll fucking in my face.” 

Karkat flinched but quickly covered it with a snarl. His eyes bulged. "Really? Are you really going to throw down _that_ card? At least I watch porn about my own goddamn species. If that’s how you felt about it, why the hell didn’t you shut it off?” 

A cold sweat beaded down Dave’s back. “I had to watch it, man. After I figured out it was troll porn, I knew I had to commit myself to a very painful cultural enlightenment. What with all the constant references you make to troll genitals. And man, no offense, but you’re wasp-aliens who have relationships based entirely around hating a person. That’s a lot for a human to process. I sort of just froze when I saw it.”

Almost all of Karkat’s teeth were on display now. “Did it ever occur to you that your arrogant monkey-centric worldview might be blinding you to the fact that humans are the outlier here? Lots of civilizations across the universe have developed a form of romance equivalent to kismesisitude. That’s the _norm_. Humans aren’t as emotionally complex as trolls but it’s not my fault your species is so defective that you can’t grasp this. I mean, what the fuck do you need? A demonstration?”

Dave glanced at the door, measuring just how many clever quips it would take for him to cross the room. Sweat dampened his armpits. He pointed at the television. “I just had one and it scarred me for fucking life.”

Karkat laughed ruthlessly. His hands trembled with barely-restrained strangulation curling in his fingertips. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite. After how you came onto to me the other day, I thought maybe I’d been wrong about you, maybe you do want to understand troll relationships, but I guess all that was just more of you being _ironic_ , huh?”

The silence was a knife. Dave took a step back, all his wisecracks withered; he didn’t look Karkat in the face as he slipped out the door, mouth finally sealed, but too late to do him any good. 

Despite the sick feeling roiling in his gut, he couldn't deny the intriguing new images the film introduced. Dave retreated into his room. He dimmed the lights to match the atmosphere in Karkat’s block before flinging himself onto the bed. 

The video. 

Dave spit into his hand and slipped his fingers into his boxers. 

He staged the encounter in his room where he had a mattress advantage. Karkat would strip down for him, slow and shy, dumb turtleneck first, followed by jeans, shoes, socks. He would try to hide himself, a blush creeping in across his cheeks. 

Laying there in the disappointing clutches of reality, Dave stroked himself and savored his downcast eyes and lean hips. A shiver ran through Karkat. His defenses inverted into timid glances. 

Dave moaned to imagine running his fingers up his sides and scraping his nails gently over the patches of scar tissue both of the porn actors bore along their ribs. A sweet, low chirp would pulse in Karkat’s throat. Dave would press his lips to the vibration in his neck and devour the strange noise. He would massage his palm down the front of Karkat’s boxers. The chirps would give way to trills. Dave would nudge him toward the bed until he fell back on the sheets, knees spread. 

The phallus-equivalent. Bulge? It would twitch against his abdomen. Dave would suck the tip into his mouth, getting hard, even harder, to taste Karkat’s bitter lubrication. Or was it sweet? Or coppery, like blood? 

Pre-come wet Dave’s hand. He stroked his thumb over his dripping head and spit in his palm again before continuing at a furious speed, the sounds of his panted breaths and the slick pull of skin-on-skin filling the room. 

Karkat's—nook? A nook is a place where other things are meant to fit inside. Slick, musky fluid would gather at Karkat’s entrance, eager, dripping. Delicious. The word kept cycling back. Delicious. Lean thighs, soft belly, soft skin, soft cries. Legs wide open. 

Dave would drink in his bizarre sounds and the broken Alternian spilling out with every gasp. That was what did Dave in. Karkat’s rough voice rolling impossible phonemes and cutting out sentences from growls. Subvocal noises, little snarls and clicks and hisses. His full lips wrapping around the rhymes of ancient raps. 

Dave swallowed a yelp. He spilled, hot and sticky, into a handful of tissue. 

Fantasy Karkat, flushed and fucked, curled up in a cozy corner of Dave’s mind. Reality strong- armed into his place. The real Karkat burst into his thoughts, furious, hurt. Dave cleaned himself before pulling up Rose’s pesterchum window. 

TG: how sober are you right now  
TG: on a scale from charlie sheen to an imam  
TG: charlie being a fall down drunk on the verge of a psychological implosion  
TG: and the imam being totally chill

TT: Currently, I have all the composure of the imam in terms of my sobriety.  
TT: However, I am completely in awe of this breath-taking hangover that is slowly dissolving my soul like acid.  
TT: I’m not a finely tuned instrument designed to determine levels of incapacitation, but if I were to formulate an estimate, I’m sitting somewhere between Ernest Hemingway waking up after a night of working through a crisis of masculinity with a gallon of whisky and Britney Spears during 2007.

TG: are you in your room

TT: The common room.

TG: can you shuffle up to your room  
TG: or fly or whatever you can manage  
TG: so i can meet you there  
TG: i want your advice on something

TT: If my mouth weren’t already slack and drooling my jaw would drop to the floor. Dave Strider wants my advice.  
TT: I’m on the edge of my seat wondering what it could be.

TG: dont pop a psychology stiffy just yet  
TG: this isnt gonna be about you analyzing my dreams and telling me how my subconscious is crafting metaphor after metaphor about how im secretly repressing a desire to fuck my older brother  
TG: right now i need to grill you on troll shit  
TG: i just fucked up in the most extravagant way possible

Sitting on her bed—Dave cross-legged, back against the headboard, and Rose horizontal with an ice pack under her temple—he went through the excruciating details, one by one. 

Rose pursed her lips. Her desk lamp illuminated Dave from behind. “I’m in a committed relationship with a troll,” she said, “and though I’m not denying the allure of biological differences, I think you should start by being honest about what you really like about Karkat.” 

Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s cool, but in a stealthy way. You can’t even tell at first but you spend enough time with him and then it hits you and you’re like, ‘damn, this anal little dipshit is actually pretty all right’. I can’t even explain it. Like maybe its opposites attract? I’m super chill and he’s a hysterical mess, so we balance out.” 

“Close.” 

Dave leaned, letting the lamp catch her full in the face. “Why don’t you just spit it out so that you can be smug and I can deny it and we can both move on with our day?” 

Rose squinted and retreated under blankets. She mumbled from beneath a fistful of purple comforter. “You’re attention-starved and it’s easy to get his attention. Karkat likes having someone who will listen to him, particularly if that someone is as passive as you. He likes being the boss, and you’re easy to push around. Also, I’m sure that mixed in there somewhere is your xenophilic passion, which is no doubt the result of you internalizing a fervid sexual attraction to your brother’s puppets. And probably your brother too.” Rose capped off her analysis with a shrug and a sip from the flask she smuggled around in her seer robes. 

“Wow. Thanks.”

“You said you wanted my advice.”

“Yeah, but this isn't advice. Right now you’re coming at me like a velociraptor.” 

Rose burrowed under her quilt. “Dave, there is currently a city-sized horrorterror lovingly dry humping my cranium with earthshaking thrusts while two dental picks try to squeeze their way out of my skull through my eye sockets. Give me a fucking break.” 

Dave switched off the desk lamp.

“Thanks,” Rose mumbled.

He plopped down next to her. Together they stared at the ceiling and nursed their respective pains. 

"What I'm trying to say is," Rose continued, "you and Karkat fit together like a chatty, emotionally constipated jigsaw puzzle. You act like he's some mystery you can't unravel but the truth is that if Karkat kissed you back, he's going through the same thing you are. You're two opposite personalities from opposite species. You're bound to butt heads." 

After a beat of soft breathing, Rose murmured, “I don’t fully understand caliginous romance either, and though I can’t say that I understand the appeal, I think you shouldn’t judge too harshly. We can't be sure what's normal for trolls and what's not. And you’re sexually attracted to a member of a different species so you’re in no position to criticize someone else’s predilections.” 

He removed his shades and set them on her bedside table. “I’m probably gonna fall asleep right here,” he hummed. 

Rose’s breathing grew soft. She would be touching down in the land of dreambubbles and dead friends soon. Dave pulled his cape over his chest like a blanket. “I don't know what the fuck I’m gonna say to him.” 

“This may sound a little unorthodox, and I don’t know how you feel about extreme stunts, so bear with me,” she said, “but you could tell him you’re sorry.” 

“Now you’ve gone too far.”

“I live to be the wildcard.” 

Dave drifted. There were implications of sleeping in the same bed as his sister, but with his unwitting attraction to their teenectomom (and at this rate probably teenectobro, too) a platonic sibling nap was so insignificant it couldn’t possibly make anything worse. He was already so far down the unconscious incest track that the train had jumped the rails. 

“You asked how it is with Kanaya,” Rose murmured. 

Dave’s eyes flew open. “Yeah,” he prompted softly. "C’mon. Don’t leave me hanging. You and Kanaya what?” 

She giggled. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“Oh, what the fuck, Rose. I’m begging you. What’s freaky troll sex like?”

“I want it to be a surprise.” 

He grimaced at the witchy glint in her eyes. She winked.

Dave groaned. “Can you at least do your seer thing and tell me if Karkat is going to forgive me?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“You aren’t trying hard enough.”

She elbowed him in the ribs. 


	6. The Part Where They Bang

Dave skulked outside Karkat’s door, fists shoved in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels with yesterday’s Karkapocolypse chewing at his thoughts. He counted to ten, raised his fist to knock, where hovered in the air before falling to his side. He stepped back. 

The door slid opened. Dave jumped. 

Karkat braced himself in the frame, the cords in his arms and neck taut. “Are you fucking kidding me," he snapped. "You’ve been out here pacing back in forth with your tail between your legs for five minutes. Are you coming in or not?” 

Dave followed Karkat into the room. Out of habit he plopped on the couch. Karkat leaned against the wall, scowling from the shadows as he measured Dave up. Other than the occasional flash of his eyes, he melted into the dark. 

Dave laced his fingers. “So, we need to talk.”

“We are talking,” Karkat snarled. He spat out a hiss like a snake with a throat full of marbles. 

Dave cringed. There was that Pleistocene creature in the back of his mind again, huddled by a fire in the blackest hour of the night, sniffing the air and grunting at the silhouettes in the trees. “Can you not loom in the corner while I do this,” Dave asked. 

Karkat rolled his eyes. He prowled over and fell onto the couch as though he bore a grudge against it. “Is there something you want to tell me?” 

“I’m—“ Dave faltered. 

“You’re what,” he asked, biting like acid. 

"Sorry." 

Karkat stared. " _And?"_

Dave went through his mental checklist. _I'm_. Check. _Sorry_. Check. "And." 

"That's it? That's all you wanted to say?" 

Dave pursed his lips, leg bouncing. He flicked through an internal rolodex of suave and apathetic replies. "Yeah..." 

Karkat's ears flattened back. Before he could bare his fangs, Dave surged forward. Karkat flinched but not quick enough to evade the mouth that found the swell of his lip. It was just a peck. But the contact was enough to trip a wire in Dave’s body, triggering a series of explosions starting from his head and ending in his heels. 

He drew back. He failed to find enchantment or lust coloring Karkat’s face. Rather, his fist clenched in his lap. Dave scooted away ready to dodge in case that fist had plans to become acquainted with his jaw. 

“What,” Karkat breathed out a deep snarl, “the _fuck_?” 

Dave had scripted this moment differently; After the kiss Karkat was meant to swoon, but he missed his cue. Now they sat there unable to proceed with the scene. 

Fantasy Karkat was easier to contend with than real Karkat. Fantasy Karkat liked to yell too but he always gave into Dave after a reasonable buildup of sexual tension. 

“You... you...” Karkat stammered. “What is wrong with you?” 

“I don't know." 

Karkat's confounded brows dropped low on his forehead. His mouth twisted into a frown. “Oh, yeah, that’s great, Strider. Just shrug your shoulders and say ‘my bad, dawg’. We’ll just slap a bandaid on this booboo and pretend it never happened. I’ve got no clue what your deal is half the time.” His voice shot into the range between shrill and hysterical. “You're an insincere, sarcastic little Earth monkey and I’ve had it up to my horns with your inscrutable two-faced bullshit.” 

“I’m supposed to tell you—God, I fucked this up. I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I was an asshole to you. I was an asshole to you on so many levels. That’s what I wanted to say when I was apologizing, but I forgot to say that and then I forgot to tell you that I like you and I just kind of skipped the whole anime-schoolgirl-love-confession thing and went straight for the kill.” 

Karkat gaped at him as though his grasp on the English language had taken a nosedive. “Huh?” 

“I said some really rude shit to you... so I came here to say that I’m sorry.” Dave shook his head. “I'm sorry for the shitty things I said about trolls. I don't really believe any of it. I just saw that fucking video and I panicked. So, yeah,” he finished, rubbing his mouth and staring at Karkat’s shoes. “That’s all I wanted to say, I think.” 

"I want to know why." 

"Why what?" 

"Why you said the things that you said." 

"There's no reason," Dave insisted. "I was being uncool to distract from the fucking weird disturbing kink porn—" 

"There wasn't anything remotely disturbing about that video,” Karkat snapped. He leaned forward. “If you thought it was weird, why did you keep watching it?”

Dave colored. "Can this awful conversation be over now?" 

" _No_ , you _tool_." Karkat turned his body to face Dave with tucked a leg under him, as though prepared to lunge. "Now for unaired grievance number two—" Dave groaned and dropped his face into his hands."—Why did you kiss me?" 

"Well, hey, check that out. I've got an unaired grievance too. Why did you _kiss me back_ and then push me off you and drop my ass on the floor like you were Bruce Lee and I was some chump who showed up to the streetfight without his nunchuks?” 

Karkat bristled. “I—you—don't try and make this about me, you reprehensible shit." 

"I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you and I thought you might want to kiss me back," Dave said. "Now it's your turn." 

“You said you like me. What do you mean? Are we talking about your emotionally incompetent version of 'like' or a platonic 'like' or what?” 

"Great job avoiding my question." 

“Just tell me.” 

Their breaths mingled. Karkat tasted like Tab. Dave searched his face, raking over his nose, his jaw hanging ajar, and thick brows furrowed. Dave leaned forward, breathing in the scent that in the past month he came to crave more than the oxygen mingled with it. The meowbeast was out of the carrying device, as they say on trollworld. “I... _like_ like you.” 

Karkat scoffed. 

“No, listen, I watch you a lot. No, not in a weird way. I mean, I guess in a weird way. You’re... nice to look at.” 

“Strider—“ 

“I can’t keep my eyes off you, you’re so cute. But you’re going just get even more beautiful, huh? When you grow up. Scary beautiful. All sexy but also terrifying, like a panther. ” 

Karkat shook his head. “Wha—panther? What is...Strider, what the hell are you talking about?” 

“I don’t know. Fuck. I’m trying to be smooth here. Let’s rewind. Okay. Let me boil my argument down to a basic thesis: I can’t stop thinking about you.” 

Karkat’s mouth fell open. Dave leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. 

“I don’t know how you feel about me, but let me just put this out there: I like coming in here and listening to you talk about Alternia. I like your rap. I like you, even though you’re fucking impossible to be friends with. But I think you’re funny and... you're an all right dude. So there,” he said, arms crossed, lips drawn, and eyes wide as a baby deer’s behind the sanctity of his shades. 

Karkat shook his head. “Sometimes I just want to smack the shit out of you.” He leaned forward, closing the gap that separated them, and kissed Dave. They broke apart before Dave could remember how to kiss him back. 

The tension released from Karkat’s shoulders. They pushed apart. Dave leaned away, assessing Karkat’s squint. 

“So what do you want,” Karkat asked. 

Dave rubbed the back of his neck, reeling from the sensation of Karkat taking initiative. “I guess, I just want us to keep hanging out. Like, nothing has to change. We're still bros, but, like, with benefits. Canoodling benefits. Extensive kissing coverage. Snuggle services. Affordable groping premiums.”

Karkat glowered at him.

"So yeah." He pushed his shades up his nose. "Would you be into that?" 

"I refuse to be your bro with benefits. The concept is repugnant to me. A relationship can't be built on rap and making-out alone. What you described is a train wreck waiting to come screaming down on top of our hormone-addled bodies." 

Dave swallowed his disappointment. It didn't hurt. No, it didn't. 

Karkat scooted closer. "But," he continued, "I'd be willing to be your boyfriend. At least, for a trial period. I've got some time to kill. If nothing else, I'll be able to teach you how to properly romance someone." 

"Even though I'm a dirty Earth monkey?"

"I've dated worse. Better than a nasty Alternian clown."

Dave smiled down at his lap. "All right," he said. "Sounds good." A kiss landed on his cheek.

 

* * *

 

So they established a rhythm. 

Karkat would let Dave into his room, they’d eat snacks, they’d learn about dinosaurs, they'd kiss (sometimes all they'd do is kiss), and they’d listen to rap until one or both of them became sleepy and tetchy. 

Sitting on the floor, Dave flipped through the Alternian literature textbook, searching for vocabulary words on Karkat’s instruction. (His hold on the alphabet was still shaky, but he already memorized three words because they appeared on almost every page. _Sanyar_ for warrior. _Tsiri_ for romance. _Am_ for blood.) Karkat lounged across from him, taking up the whole of the sofa. A pop up stegosaurus protruded from the book on his lap. 

On Karkat’s computer, a song played in the background, volume almost muted. 

Karkat’s textbook presented a poem rhyme scheme, corresponding lines labeled with what Dave recognized as vowels. First, the _oh_ sound. Then _ah._ Then _oo_. He skimmed the poem, searching for words he recognized as nouns. Nouns were easier to learn than verbs. Fuck conjugations. “Okay, so what is... holy crap... sh... sh... th... _shthaha_. Am I saying that right?” 

Karkat collapsed the stegosaurus back into its page. A velociraptor took its place. He pointed to his head without pulling his attention away from the dinosaurs. “ _Shthaha_. Horns, plural. _Shtha_. One horn, singular.” 

Dave’s shaded gaze travelled down his body, starting with the candy corn nestled in his hair and scoping along his lean legs. He grinned. “I think I need a hands-on demonstration." 

Karkat’s brow furrowed. He glanced away from the herd of paper brontosaurus meandering across the valley of his lap.

“Hands-on how—? Oh no, oh fuck no. Don’t come near me.” 

“What kind of teacher are you to deny your student knowledge,” Dave asked as he waddled around the coffee table on his knees, arms outstretched like a curious toddler. “Just let me touch them.” 

Karkat sighed. Dave's fingers met no resistance as he rubbed the chitinous nubs between his thumbs and forefingers, testing their smooth surface, like weather-beaten stone. He pressed the pads of his fingers into the thick flesh ringing the horns' bases, admiring the kitten-purr expression that tugged Karkat's eyelids closed. "Is that nice?" 

He murmured. Dave ran his fingers through his hair, mussing what was already perpetually mussed. Karkat showed Dave his fangs. Dave snickered. “What’s hair,” he asked. 

“ _Nrayi_.” 

“Nraaa yee." He traced the curve of Karkat's jaw. "What’s skin?” 

_“Hshisth.”_

“Oh fuck. H...hish... ist.” 

Dave stroked the delicate column of his throat. Karkat's breathing turned soft. Mouth parted, his tongue slipped out to wet his lips. "It also means grey." 

Dave pulled his hand away. "What?" 

" _Hshisth_ means skin but it also means grey. Grey as in fleshtone." 

“What are lips?” 

“ _Marl_ ,” said Karkat. 

Dave rubbed a thumb over the rim of Karkat's mouth, pulling the flesh down to examine his teeth. Karkat’s fangs scraped his skin. The pop up book slid off the couch and thumped onto the floor. 

“I remember _shreya_ ,” said Dave, ghosting over the gently curved eyeteeth of his upper jaw.

Karkat made a sound of agreement. "Can you remember everything I just told you?”

“ _Shtha._ Ner _... nrayi."_ Dave grimaced. "Hih...ish... hist? M… marrel."

Karkat frowned. "Two out of four." 

"That's not so bad."

"It's fifty percent. That's an F, Dave." 

"Damn." Dave shrugged. "I guess I need more practice. Maybe you should teach me all the parts of the body. I volunteer to be the model.” 

Karkat bit back his amusement. “Okay.”

Dave’s mouth fell open. “Really? I'm half kidding. This is just a ploy to make out with you.” 

"I'm not an idiot, Strider. I thought you were going to kiss me when you asked me about lips. That was your opportunity. You just let it slide right the fuck by." 

"Well sorry, but life ain't a troll harlequin romance novel. The last time I tried to kiss you out of nowhere, you threw me on the floor. I'm trying to be more respectful. Isn't that what you wanted?" 

"I won't do that this time." Karkat sat up and made room for Dave to join him on the sofa. 

Dave blinked. "What, do you want me to take it from the top?" 

"Yes, I do. And I would appreciate it if you threw out that condescending attitude. I'm not the one who dropped the ball here." Karkat jabbed a finger at the seat next to him. "C'mon. Let's do this." 

Dave made a show of pushing himself to his feet and dumping his girth on the sofa. "Okay." He cleared his throat. "Karkat." 

"Yes, Dave."  
"How do you say lips in Alternian?" 

“ _Marl."_

They stared at one another. Dave scratched at an itch on his hip and yawned. Karkat leaned forward. "Well?" 

"Nah. Not feeling it this time." 

The tips of Karkat's ears turned red. "Listen to me, you syphilitic pustule on the universe's taint. After all the bullshit we trudged through to get here, after everything you put me through, I am in no mood for your coy games. You're on thin fucking ice as it is, so if I were you—" 

His rant dropped off a cliff. Dave leaned forward. His lips missed their mark, planting a kiss on Karkat's ear rather than his mouth. He whispered, low and husky, letting his voice caress the cartilage, "What's the word for ear?" 

Karkat exhaled against his neck. " _Chishim. Chishima_ for both."

" _Chishim,"_ Dave repeated. He dragged his open mouth along his jaw, down the grade of his throat, leaving a wet trail. "What about here? What's your neck called?" 

" _Amas_." He wrapped his arms around Dave's shoulders, pressing his face into the slope under his jaw. 

Dave teased his nape, feeling the boundary where hair ended and skin began. He rolled his palm over his back, investigating the topography of his muscles and the peaks of his bones just below the skin, and playing with the scar patches along his ribs under his sweater. His shades obscured his gaze as it wandered up Karkat’s thighs. 

Dave laid back on the sofa and allowed Karkat to crawl over him. Ribcage settled against ribcage. Lean, flexible sinew draped across Dave's chest, pressing a beating heart to his torso. Dave flushed from the sweetness of it. "This time you can't push me off the couch," he said. 

"I said I wouldn't, didn't I?" His mouth molded against Dave's, raking sharp teeth over the inside of his lip. He licked into his mouth. Dave ran his hands up the back of Karkat's thighs. 

Karkat wrapped his arms around his shoulders and pulled him close. Nuzzling Dave’s neck, purring like a goddamn kitten, all hot and pliant and unKarkat. Dave’s heart melted like butter on fresh bread. He tilted Karkat’s head up, devouring his bottom lip, sucking and licking. Kissing kept Karkat quiet. Nothing to hear but the slide of mouths. 

Heat poured from Karkat into Dave, cascading down his throat into his groin and he whispered a moan as invisible threads in his pelvis pulled taut. Blood swelled in his length. As their legs slotted together, Karkat's thigh rolled over his erection. He arched off the sofa as though it bit him. Eyeing the newcomer with extreme prejudice, he stared down lump between Dave's legs. 

"What's wrong," Dave asked, struggling to hold down a tone of voice that wasn't impatient or frustrated. 

Karkat settled back on his haunches. "What... is that?"

"My dick? Or, I guess, my—" Dave rolled his eyes and made air quotes. "—bulge." 

"It did that last time..." 

Dave shifted. The organ in question chafed against the inside of his boxers. "Did what? Get hard? It just does that on it's own. I can't control it." He hesitated, then added, "We can just ignore it. It'll eventually, like, go away after a while." 

Karkat nodded. "Okay." He cleared his throat and made no move to return to Dave. 

"What?"

"Nothing," Karkat snapped. "Just give me a fucking minute."

Dave sat up. "Oh my god, is this why you kicked me out the last time with kissed?" 

Red suffused Karkat's cheeks. "No..." 

"You are such a goddamn hypocrite." Dave shook his head. "I fucking knew it." 

"Excuse me? Are you comparing your blanket contempt for my entire culture and race to my minor hangups regarding genitals that I'm not familiar with? You may want to rethink that, Strider." 

"No, you grudging little shit, I'm comparing you letting the eel in your briefs rub against me like a cat, but as soon as I do the same thing to you all of sudden some sort of line has been crossed and Dave is being forcibly removed from the premises by two burly bouncers named cockblock and Karkat's hysterical xenophobia." 

"You're just as weirded out by my gentalia as I am by yours," he replied. 

Dave broke into waves of high, sarcastic laughter. "Dude, this may shock you, but that assumption is completely false." 

Karkat blinked. "What are you saying?" 

"What's it sound like I'm saying?" Dave flashed a grin despite his blush and trembling hands. "I'm saying that if you wanted it, I'd get between your legs right now and do whatever you told me to do." 

Dave broke eye contact. He turned his head and stared at the fibers of Karkat's sleeve while the boy above him turned pale as cigarette ashes. 

Karkat swallowed. "Okay."

Dave's heart paused. Breathless, he asked, "Are you serious?" 

They exchanged a long stare before Karkat nodded. "It's going to seem pretty different," he warned. 

Dave pushed his shades up his nose, heart thundering, mouth salivating. He swallowed. "Yeah, I know. I saw the—I saw." 

Karkat frowned. "And... I don't want to take my pants off." 

Dave bobbed his head. "Okay, that's cool. If that's a hard no I can respect that. I'm all about respecting boundaries. No clothes have to come off," he blathered. "So, should I just jam my hand down there and do it like I'm reading braille or what?" 

Karkat took a deep breath. "Show me your nails." 

"Why?" 

Karkat snatched Dave's hand. He inspected the keratin, rubbing his thumb along the tips. "You just clipped them?" 

"I guess, like, a couple days ago."

Karkat nodded his approval. "Let me lie down next to you." 

They arranged their bodies. Dave pinned Karkat to the sofa's backrest while he himself was in danger of falling off the edge onto the floor. "I'm not digging the precarious position I'm in," he said, glancing over his shoulder. 

"You have my solemn word, you wiggler," Karkat insisted. "I'm not going to push you off the couch." 

He unbuttoned his jeans, allowing Dave access to uncharted territory. They rested their foreheads together. Before he took the plunge, Dave rubbed his palms until they were warm. Karkat flinched when his fingertips brushed his belly. 

"Are you sure you're down for this," Dave asked. 

When Karkat didn't respond--just lowered his ears by a degree and looked away--Dave kissed him, coaxing his lips open to play with his tongue. Their noses bumped together. Under the influence of Dave's kisses, Karkat's tension released. Dave slipped a hand down his pants. Karkat gave up a soft moan and a chirp from somewhere deep in his chest. Dave pulled back. He found Karkat's eyes closed and a crinkle between his brows. "Listen," Dave murmured. "We don't have to do anything. We can save the xenological exploration for another time." 

Karkat cracked an eye and tugged the shades off Dave's nose. Dave froze as the dark glasses lifted away. They held each other's gaze as Karkat led Dave's hand down the front of his underwear. 

Dave sucked in a breath. He first encountered a bump, firm and split where something was meant to emerge. But Karkat didn't linger there. With a sigh, he pushed Dave down to an opening slick with fluid. Karkat and he gasped in tandem. Dave rubbed the slit. The tender flesh yielded to him. Karkat pressed his face into Dave's neck and threw a leg over his hip. 

"Not that this isn't magical," Dave said, "but what should I do with this thing?" 

Karkat heaved a sigh. "Fuck. Just... I don't know... touch it. I'll let you know if it doesn't feel right." 

Dave traced the entrance, brushing the lips and dipping into the hot furrow to listen to the chirps it inspired in Karkat's throat. He found no trace of hair. From his belly to his nook, there was nothing to stand in his way of him caressing the smooth skin. He ached to see it; this wet slit that fluttered, shy beneath his fingertips. His erection strained against the inside of his pants. 

"I know you want to preserve your maidenly honor or whatever, but it might help if I could see what I'm doing," he whispered. 

Karkat burrowed further into his neck, panting. "No," he murmured, weak and unconvinced. 

Dave broke into a wicked grin. "Come on, let me see your cute little pussy," he purred. Karkat shivered. "Just a peek." 

"I don't know if pussy is your word for human nook or what but your lascivious gaze is not coming within a mile of mine, so you can cut that shit out." 

They exchanged lazy kisses. Their lips pressed and pulled on one another, producing wet pops and soft, slick licks. Dave pushed a finger into the entrance. Karkat's thighs closed around his wrist when he tried to pull out. 

"You want me to stay like this," he asked. 

"Mmm," Karkat confirmed. "Just, kinda, wiggle your finger—yes, yes, like that." 

Dave nuzzled the top of his head, inhaling the scent of his hair. "Let me see your face." 

Karkat shook his head. 

"C'mon. I need some feedback." Dave pressed a kiss to one of his blood-warm horns. "Look at me." 

"It's weird," Karkat mumbled. 

"It's not weird. Man, if it were weird I wouldn't be here. I—it's all good," Dave assured him. He rolled the seat of his palm against his mound, smearing the lubrication over the skin. He undulated his finger within the slit. 

Karkat hissed against Dave's neck as he stroked his walls. No matter where he touched he got a positive reaction, a general mewl or soft "yes", until he located a patch of tissue whose texture was a touch firmer than the rest. It rippled under Dave's finger. Karkat snatched Dave's wrist and pumped him deeper. "Right there," he whispered. "There is perfect." 

Their ankles knocked together. Dave offered kiss after kiss to Karkat's mouth. 

"Come on," Dave asked between dragging his mouth against Karkat's and panting for breath. "Let me see you." 

Karkat squeezed his eyes shut. "Fine," he murmured, "you fucking paragon of depravity." 

Dave rolled off the sofa and crouched in the gap between it and the coffee table. Karkat pushed himself upright. 

The pants had to come off. Dave tugged his grey jeans down, swallowing back his drool. When his fingers hooked around the underwear’s elastic band, Karkat raised his hands, just barely touching his wrists. He neither stopped Dave nor urged him on. They gazed at each other. 

Dave slipped his underwear off his legs. 

Hidden away between Karkat's thighs sat an assortment of organs known to Dave only through myth, legend, and crude references to bodily functions. Top down, Dave recognized a sheathed bone bulge, a set of globes, and the pièce de résistance. Nook. The arrangement was so similar to the hairless, puffy vulvas he knew of from internet porn that a sense of familiarity threw a wet towel over the panic sparking at the back of his mind. 

A sliver of red (caution red, danger red, enter at your own risk red) played peekaboo between two flushing lips. Fluid glistened on the slit. Musk teased Dave's nostrils until his mouth watered. The skin surrounding the area was heather grey and baby soft, with the blush of the blood just beneath the surface. 

It was love at first sight. 

"I—so, should I—I just," Dave stammered, flushing. "W-what's going on down here? What the hell is this thing and does it have any poison barbs or teeth or anything else I should worry about?" 

Karkat wouldn't meet Dave's eyes. The back of his neck rested against the sofa, his nose pointed at the ceiling. "For fuck's sake, Strider. Just do what you were doing before. It's not equipped with suckers or anything, nor is it going to lay an egg in you, you neurotic, bigoted, bucket-slurping filth." 

"Okay. Yeah, okay. But. I kinda want to..." 

Karkat squinted down at Dave. "What?" 

Dave swallowed. "...kiss..." He angled his head toward the furrow. "Kiss..." 

Moon-eyed, Karkat studied him. "You want to kiss me... down there?" 

Dave turned to the wall and shrugged. 

"Like, with your mouth?" 

"No, Karkat, with my elbows." 

Karkat cringed and pulled at the hem of his sweater, tugging at a loose thread until it unravelled. Dave smoothed his hands over his thighs. "I guess you can," Karkat grumbled. 

Dave bobbed his head. "All right. Cool." Palms on Karkat's knees, he spread his legs by a few inches. His nook split. A drop of lubrication drooled down his mound. Dave leaned in. His cock throbbed as he nosed along the skin, nuzzling at the flesh and enjoying the way it pillowed under his touch. He sucked in a breath, cataloging every flavor note; pheromones calling out to him. 

“What’s the word for ‘delicious’?” asked Dave, letting his breath puff over the tissue. 

Karkat’s spine spasmed. "You—are you kidding me? You want a vocabulary lesson _now_?" His pleased blush betrayed his angry glare. 

"What better time than now? I'm a kinesthetic learner." Dave traced a trembling finger over his entrance, circling toward the aggressive shade of red. "I retain information best if I can get my hands all up in the business of what I'm learning." 

"Unbelievable." Karkat murmured, “For taste it’s... ah... _kikyad_. For smell, _nyuleb_.” Dave turned his head to mouth at the inside of his thigh. “Nyooleb _,”_ he hummed. Karkat bit back a grunt. 

“Kiiiiik. Yahd _._ ” Dave tilted his head to one side and approached the nook like it was another mouth. He brushed over the aching, hot skin. The kiss was not unlike the ones he gave Karkat just minutes before, but this one he let linger. His pucker nestled into the opening, right where grey met red, and pushed off with a wet smack. Beneath his touch, Karkat trembled. 

Pink slick gathered at his entrance. Dave shuddered; His touches made his body change. Karkat was _wet_ thanks to _him_. Dave lapped at the slit, slurping up the bitter tang. 

"Wow, Strider," Karkat grunted. "Could you possibly be anymore obnoxiously loud down there?" 

Adjusting the tilt of his head, Dave mouthed at the opening with an especially loud _ssschlup_. Karkat trilled and fisted a pillow. Dave could've eaten nook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of his life. Both his drool and Karkat's pleasure slipped down his chin and pooled sticky-pink on the sofa. 

With each little chirp Karkat produced, he choked and snatched at the air with his fangs, as though trying to catch the sounds before they escaped and flew away. Using his thumb, Dave spread his folds. Dave glanced up. Karkat observed him, eyelids heavy with either lust or suspicion. Knowing Karkat, likely both. Dave returned his mouth to where it belonged and attempted to do with his tongue what he did with his finger. He thrust deep, as deep as Karkat's pelvis would allow. He licked a silky soft spot hiding just behind his bulge sheath. 

Karkat hummed. Fingers curled in Dave's hair. They moved as one, Karkat tugging him forward, Dave rocking on his knees to meet him, trying to get just one centimeter, one millimeter of tongue deeper inside. Dave pictured a treasure map of Karkat's nook with a juicy, red 'x' painted over a patch of flesh. 

"Stay just like that," Karkat ordered. "That's it, just right there." 

Though Dave tried to obey, his tongue grew sore. The tip stuttered. It slid from the opening, floundering like a sea bass flopping on a pier. 

"Dave," Karkat groaned. " _Come on_." 

Dave pulled back. He grumbled, "How about you try to tongue fuck yourself for five minutes and see how long you can last. Unbunch your panties. I've got you covered." Dave slipped his finger back inside. He gasped when Karkat's nook constricted around his knuckle. 

With his free hand, Dave fumbled with his zipper and took his erection into his hand. Karkat watched him jack himself, some shy curiosity surfacing from beneath the glaze of pleasure. Dave angled his body so that Karkat could watch. He pulled with slow, decadent strokes. A drip of cum swelled at the tip. Karkat tilted his head. 

Dave, for the first time in his life, thanked his DNA for withholding the gene sequence for a mammoth package and instead equipping him with a penis of average length and width. Wriggling out of his underwear, he put himself on display—(see, look, it’s not scary)—from spongy tip to his balls. Karkat watched with worried brows. 

Dave kissed his entrance. "These are the cutest alien genitals I've ever seen," He muttered against his skin. His nose prodded his shame globes. 

Karkat nibbled his sweater's neckline. 

"Do you like that," Dave whispered, licking up the lubrication squeezing out around his finger. "Do you like it when I talk about your absolutely choice naughty bits?" 

"No," Karkat hissed. "Frankly, I can think of better uses for your tongue." 

"So I shouldn't tell you how your _kikyad_ junk makes my fucking mouth water? Or that your pussy is the prettiest thing I've ever had shoved in my face?" 

Karkat gave his head a half-hearted swat but the muscles clamping down on Dave's fingers relayed a different message. 

"You taste so good, you smell so good. I'm loving the pink, by the way." Dave crooked his finger. Karkat's hips shot off the couch. "Look at your precious little nook and how it just opens right up for me. It's like, 'hi Dave, it's so nice to meet you'. It's very nice to meet you too, you little cutie. And it blushes because she's an old-fashioned girl and she's never received a gentleman caller before. See look at that blush." 

"Holy shit, shut the fuck up," Karkat gasped. 

"Nah, no way. I need to get this off my chest. I could compose sonnets on all the ways your nook is making my goods do a one-man jitterbug." 

Karkat puffed up his cheeks. He snatched Dave by the hair and silenced him with a mouthful of pelvis. 

Dave thrust his tongue in with his finger, working against the 'x' on the treasure map. Karkat trilled and seized around him. A pause preceded the torrent, leaving Dave to fend for himself in the breached dam that was a troll orgasm. Dave hacked. Spit and release dribbled from his lips. 

Karkat sputtered apologies while Dave admired his handiwork. His climax drenched the floor and sofa, but most of him soaked the front of Dave's godtier pajamas, gluing the fabric to his chest, warm and sticky. 

”I’m so fucking sorry," Karkat said, hands over his eyes. "I was going to warn you. Usually I know when it's about to happen." 

"It's cool, man. Shh, just calm your rumble spheres." Dave slicked his hand with pink. He slid his erection through the tunnel of his fist, mimicking the clench of a nook. Temple resting against Karkat's knee, Dave jerked himself to the sight of an entrance so swollen that release continued to drip from the lips. Karkat's fingers ran through his hair. A hammer swung down behind Dave's hips, cracking the orgasm out of him. He sucked in a breath and spilled over his fingers. 

They rested, quiet but for the sound of their breathing. Dave held his hand aloft, trying not to get his cum on anything while the puddle of Karkat's release leeched around his knees. 

Karkat scratched behind his ear. Dave gave him a tongue bath, cleaning the insides of his thighs while he purred. He saved for last the curve of Karkat’s—vulva? The cushy outer bit. Dave leaned in and lapped at the succulent flesh. 

“What’s this,” he asked. 

“What’s what,” Karkat murmured after a yawn. “My nook? _Arru_.” 

Dave savored the way he rolled the R. “What about the part around it?” 

“What the you mean the part around it? It’s _arru_. All of it together is _arru_.” 

“Ar...r-r-r-u. I can’t roll the R. Can I just say _aru_?” 

“ _Aru_ means corner.” 

Karkat joined him on the floor, kneeling on shaky legs. His gaze found Dave's cock. He tilted his head and wrapped his fingers around the shaft. Still sensitive, Dave jerked. 

"How does it work," he asked. 

"Back and forth," Dave answered, miming a thrusting motion with his hips. "Into a vagina or... other places. Mammal style." 

Like petting a stingray, Karkat stroked his testicles with two fingers. Dave snickered. "And what do these do?" 

"Sort of, just, hang there. Like, they're what makes the baby batter but I don't know what else. Earth was destroyed before I ever took a health class." When Karkat squeezed them gently, Dave added, "And they can feel good. Like, touching them can feel good." 

"They sound exactly like shame globes." Karkat's lip curled. He let Dave's genitals drop and wiped his hand off on the front of his sweater. 

"We should get cleaned up," said Karkat. 

”Sure."

They continued to stare at each other. "What," Karkat asked. 

"Are you cool with what just happened?"

"Of course I am."

Dave tucked himself back into his pajamas. "Fine." 

"Why? Are you not cool?"

"I'm always cool." 

Karkat shook his head. He wobbled to his feet and yanked his jeans back up his hips, abandoning his attempts to keep his cum from soaking into the denim. 

"I'm cool as ice," Dave mumbled. "Any cooler and you'd catch a cold. I'm only asking about that look you're giving me." 

"What look?" 

"Like you're trying not to throw up on my lap." His filter failed to trap his bitterness before it leaked into his voice. 

Karkat took great interest in making certain that his trousers were zippered and buttoned, going so far as to unbutton and rebutton twice. "I'm giving you no such look. How about you stop projecting?" 

Dave collapsed on the couch, extending his sore knees. The cushion squelched. "Whatever." He glanced at the pink drying on the floor. It spread like melted strawberry sorbet, soon to be a crusty veneer. 

"Give me some time," Karkat muttered.

Dave turned his attention back to him. "What?" 

Karkat squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Give me some time to... prepare myself... before I touch you." 

Dave drummed his fingers on his splooge-soaked knee. "Okay." 

"Not that there's anything wrong with you—" 

"Wow, let's not make it a bigger deal than it needs to be." Dave forced a laugh. "If you need time, I can give you plenty of that. I'm the motherfucking knight of time. Time is something I'm flush with. We can just wait until you're okay with..." He gestured at his crotch. "...it." 

Karkat shoved a kiss into Dave's mouth. When Karkat leaned back their skin peeled apart, tacky with troll cum. He let his palm linger on the curve of Dave's jaw. "Thanks for not being a raging douchebag about it." 

"That's just who I am." 

"Yeah. Sure." 


	7. Chapter 7

“ _Shurath m...malathk..._ ja—fuck— _dzawakyo_...” Dave squinted at the book. He muddled through the next sentence. “ _Skuya...f... fuai ma..._ ” 

They huddled on the common room rug between the love seat and a bookshelf, monopolizing all of the cushions for the construction of a lopsided pillow fort. Karkat relaxed against his side, chin on his shoulder. His breath puffed in his ear. The walls of their fort leaned against them. The roof sat on their heads. Without their bodies to hold it up, the structure would collapse. 

Dave turned the page. The rust blood agricultural commune laborer, Chichi, was about to confess her love for the blue blood courtesan, Chitsu. " _Dreshak mala thega Chichi_."

“Okay, not too shitty. Tell me what it says in English.”

Dave reread the sentence starting from _shurath_. "Moonlight illuminated the garden as she... _fuai_. She held Chichi's hands."

" _Fuai_ is an irregular verb, and it means, like, 'started to cry'. So, _fuai ma_ is 'she started to cry'."

Dave deflated, unsettling his wall of the pillow fort. "Man, this story is so shitty." 

"Just shut the fuck up and keep reading. It's about to get so good. Chitsu's patron, Chikan, is going to walk in on them." 

The transportalizer buzzed. A pair of feet padded across the common room. Kanaya peeked around the armchair consisting one of their fort's walls. She circled them like an officious condor. “Hello. I just came by to grab something I forgot." She glanced from Karkat, to Dave, to Karkat. "So... what are you two up to?” 

“Karkat’s schooling my illiterate ass.” 

She rocked back on her heels. “That sounds like fun. Good educational fun. So, you are both getting along and the tension has been dispelled, I take it?” 

Karkat flashed her an exasperated stare. “Kanaya. This is a Karkat-and-Dave activity, not a Karkat-and-Dave-and-Kanaya activity.” 

“Hm. I see.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "So it's safe to crawl out of the bomb shelter now. I'll alert Rose." 

"Yeah, you go do that." 

Kanaya puttered around until she located a book buried under a stack of Karkat's novels before slipping back out with a buzz and a zap. 

Dave muttered, "you know what we should do?" 

"Get back to reading." 

"No, fuck that. Listen," he said, wrapping his arm around Karkat's shoulder. He leaned in until his lips brushed the shell of his ear and dropped his voice in what was an approximation of sexy. "Since we're alone in here, you wanna fool around?" 

"Your depravity knows no bounds." 

"Aw, come on." 

Karkat flicked a long-suffering look at the ceiling. "Do you actually need me to explain why flashing our genitals here, _in the common area_ , is a tremendously awful idea?" 

"No. Unbutton your pants." 

"We'll make a mess."

"I brought a bucket."

"You brought... a..." 

Dave winked. "I alchemized one to keep on hand just in case. Wasn't that thoughtful? Don't you want to give your culturally sensitive trial-boyfriend a kiss?" 

Karkat's lip curled. "We are not doing anything that involves a bucket out in public view." 

"So just the kiss then?"

He frowned. " _Fine_. Then we get back to work."

”Yes, Mr. Vantas," Dave simpered. "But if I'm naughty, will I get detention?" 

"Shut up. _One_ kiss." Karkat caught Dave's bottom lip between his teeth. 

But after the first kiss, Dave wanted a second. Then a third. Then Karkat wanted another. They fell into each other, both opening their mouths to take the other in. Karkat acquiesced when Dave nudged him back, lying back on the concrete floor. Their fort collapsed on top of them. If Pompeii itself descended into destruction around them, they wouldn't have noticed. 

"I said one kiss," Karkat muttered. 

"Kisses are like the goddamn candy named after them. You can't just have one. As soon as you have one, you need another." He pressed his mouth to Karkat's neck. "And another and another. Pretty soon you're throwing up in the kitchen and Bro is yelling at you because some of it got on one of his puppets." 

They rolled over to rest on their sides, facing each other. Something squirmed against Dave's leg. He brightened. "Hello, what have we here? Our fourth guest finally joins us." 

"Fourth," Karkat asked. "Who's the third?" Dave gestured at the lump between his own legs. 

"No way," Karkat grumbled. "We're not doing that here. Someone is going to materialize and see you with your hand up my nook." 

Dave peeked at the transportalizer. "I have an idea." He hauled the armchair across the floor, dragging four tracks of dust on the concrete and positioned it atop of the pad. "There. Now no one can come through." 

Karkat sighed. Crawling up his body, Dave showered him in kisses. He fumbled with the button to Karkat's jeans long enough that Karkat lost patience and ripped them open himself. He stuffed Dave's hand down the front of his underwear with no preamble. 

Dave's thumb brushed over a moist bump. At his touch, it blossomed like a bud, setting free a coil of animal muscle. It prodded between Dave's fingers, investigating the soft palm. "The Chamber of the Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware," he whispered. "The basilisk awakens." 

"Shut up, shut up, shut up." 

Karkat's bulge washed his hand with a warm, slick embrace. Dave squeezed him. Gasps puffed from Karkat's mouth. 

"Get behind me," Karkat breathed.

Dave paused. "Uh."  
"Get the pail out and sit up on your knees." 

Dave obeyed. He popped it out of his sylladex, almost letting it clatter to the floor in the process, while Karkat stripped out of his jeans and underwear. He snatched the receptacle out of Dave's hands. 

Dave stared at the curved of Karkat's ass. "So how do we..." 

"Do it just like I taught you." Rough hands tugged Dave close, until his chest pressed against Karkat's back. Dave's hands slipped around his waist. Two fingers slipped inside his nook while his grip returned to his bulge, rolling the flesh between his knuckles. 

"Oh fuck, yeah. Yeah, you got it." Karkat's eyes slit. "You get to take home a gold star today, Strider." 

"Bro's gonna be so proud," Dave replied, wiping away a fake tear. "His little brother's first xeno- handjob merit badge. I'm finally bringing honor the Strider name. Maybe he won't make me sleep out on the fire escape tonight." 

Karkat's heavy breaths became trills. He positioned himself over the bucket and spilled, singing a song of pleasure and trembling at the thighs. A pink whirlpool sloshed between Karkat's legs. Dave kissed the back of his neck. 

For a full minute neither moved. They breathed as one, Dave's arms wrapped around his waist, Karkat's hands gripping his wrists. 

Dave purred, "Was that to your satisfaction, Mr. Vantas?" 

"Fair."

"Yeah, fair. Sure. Your mouth says fair. Your cooter says 'oooh, Mr. Strider, oooh'." 

"Great job ruining the moment. Get your jizzy paws off of me." 

Dave released him. Karkat opened his sylladex. A fresh towel dropped into his hand. "It's ridiculous. I've become fucking Equius with the metric fuckton of towels I'm hauling around in here. See what you've turned me into?" 

Dave leaned back against the bookshelf and slid his neglected cock through his finger's still coated with Karkat's slick. He enjoyed the show Karkat was putting on. The towel stroked up his thigh, down his thigh, up the other, down the other. It brushed over the cleft of his nook. It wiped his belly clean. 

Karkat glanced at him and blushed anew. "Are you fondling your freakish mammalian attachments while you watch me?" 

Dave wolf whistled.

"Vile. You're a pervert, you know that?" 

"What do you expect? I'm a sailor been adrift in this black void for almost three years now. I ain't seen something as pretty as you since I don't know when. Been staring out at nothing but abyss for months on end. All I can do is jack it to the borderline pornographic mermaid tattoo on my shoulder, which is a fucking trial because my jacking arm is the same arm as the mermaid arm. I have to sit in front of a mirror and pause every so often to get a good look at her before I keep going. I'm a lonely mariner with troubles in love. Now what do I see before me? Why, it's a nubile young boy, native to these exotic parts, half-naked and flushed. And I want to make port in you, darling." He drew out the 'ar' in darling long and pirate-seductive. 

Karkat tossed the soiled towel back into his sylladex and dug around under the cushions for his underwear. "Are you still blabbering? I tuned out after the pornographic mermaid." 

"If I give you a dollar will you take the turtleneck off real slow?" 

He didn't deign to respond. His clothes slithered their way back onto his body, much to Dave's disgust. After he zippered up, Karkat sat back on his haunches. His eyes wandered from the bucket to Dave. 

"Now who's the pervert watching who," Dave asked. His cock spasmed in his palm as Karkat's gaze failed to remove itself from his loins. 

Karkat gulped. His fingers closed around the bucket's rim. The contents slopped as he dragged it to sit before him. "Dave," he murmured, so low, so drenched in lust, Dave's hand slowed to a stop. "Come here." 

He left a burning skidmark on the floor as he scrambled over to kneel beside him. Karkat examined his cock on all sides. One eyebrow shot up, the other dropped low. Like a warrior braving himself for the clash, Karkat took a deep breath and threw back his shoulders. His fingers wrapped around Dave's length. Dave's palms swung at his side, letting Karkat assume command of the helm. 

He sucked in a breath. Karkat pulled on him, tugging the foreskin up and down. Dave hissed through his nose. 

"Actually," Dave said, "like, I know it's fun and all because the skin moves and whatever, but..." He took a shaky breath. "You want your hand to slide over it like it's made of butter. Also, you're squeezing kind of hard." 

Karkat, in a move that should not have been as arousing as it was, dipped his fingers into his bucket of splooge and jerked Dave off using his cum as lubricant. 

"Good. Good idea. Very clever. Ten out of ten for creativity and quick-thinking and... executing a triple flip... off the sex half pipe... and sticking the landing..." 

Karkat buried his tongue in Dave's mouth. When his hand snuck up the back of Dave's neck and fisted his hair, Dave released half of a whine. He let it out in full when Karkat's thumb played along the slit. 

"Too much, too much, ease up, pull over," Dave gasped. 

Squeaking something in Alternian--an expletive or an apology--Karkat flinched back. "Oh fuck, what's wrong?" 

"No, no, no. Nothing bad. That's just too sensitive. You're gonna traumatize my poor dachshund with too much of that. Here..." Dave guided his palm back to the shaft. "Like this." 

Fingers tightened according the Dave's preference, Karkat rolled his hand, calloused and slick, up the length. He squeezed a touch tighter at the head. Dave moaned. 

"Yeah, not bad. Keep it up and you'll too earn your gold star in alien crotch-fondling." He kissed the blush on Karkat's cheek. 

"Your ability to take an intimate moment and fuck it over sideways with nothing more than the words in your mouth is actually astounding to me. You should be studied." 

They rested their foreheads together. Soft breaths turned to grunts as Dave neared the end. Karkat shoved the bucket between them, combining their release as Dave hit his climax. He groaned. There was an anticlimatic splish when his cum landed with Karkat's. 

Dave sat back on his haunches. He gulped a breath. Karkat rested a hand on his thigh, rubbing with a soothing touch. 

"Why'd you do that," Dave asked. "Is this some kind of trollish compulsion?"

"Why'd I do what?"

Dave pointed at the bucket. "You squirted my mayonnaise into your ketchup."

"What the fuck did you want me to do with it? Should I just let it splurt all over the place?" 

"No, you get a tissue and come into that. This is just... like... I'm a cow and you milked me. I feel like you should call me Bessie Mae from now on and start entering me into contests at the county fair. I'll get me a blue ribbon for the perkiest udder." 

"The amount of cultural references in that statement which didn't make a single atom of sense is overwhelming. To answer your question, yes, it's a troll thing." 

"Wait, this is a... custom, right? Should I have any context to understand the significance of this bucket ritual? Are we married now?" 

"Buckets are used to collect genetic material," Karkat snapped. "And mated couples mix their slurry together. It's really not that complicated." 

"Mated couples, holy crap. So we _are_ married." Dave swirled the pail's contents, blending the white into the red-pink. "Let's break a piece of glass and celebrate. Mazol tov, motherfucker." He grabbed Karkat by the nape of the neck and dragged him in for a kiss. 

"Trolls have no concept of marriage," Karkat grumbled against his mouth. "Get your anthropocentric values out of my face." 

"Aw... we aren't even going to have a honeymoon?" "We haven't even had our first real date yet." 

Dave gestured around at the fallen pillow fort and abandoned book and jizz-heavy bucket. "What the hell was this then?" 

Karkat captchalogued the bucket. "I mean like a _date_ date. With... planning and ambience." "What, like scented candles and shit?"  
" _Romance_." 

"Oh sweet shitting Christ. All right. You know what? I'm going to do it. Challenge accepted. I'm going to romance you so fucking thoroughly your nubby horns will spin. You won't know you head from your ass." 

"Yeah, when oinkbeasts shit gold." 

Dave pushed himself to his feet. "Meet me in my block in four hours." 

Karkat squinted. "For what?" 

"For the most romantic time of your goddamn life. We're doing this man--" 

"Don't say it--" 

"--We're making this _happen_." 

Karkat groaned. Dave tugged him upright and dipped him back to smooch his grimace. "Kiss me, Karkat," he said, "for today we are alien-married." 

He uncovered the transportalizer. With a swish of his cape, he gave Karkat a bow at the waist and stepped onto the platform. Karkat's bewildered frown dissolved in a column of light. Dave rematerialized on another part of the meteor to find another grey face staring at him. 

Dave shouted. He stumbled off the pad. 

"I didn't mean to startle you," Kanaya said. "I just came back to see if you two were still... reading together... or if it was safe for Rose and I to migrate into the common room when I discovered that something blocking the transportalizer from the other side. Uh, are you and Karkat... did you want some privacy?" 

"Yeah, we, uh, got to a really hot and heavy kissing scene in the story. Chichi and Chitsu were falling all over each other, being all like 'I'm so in love with you,' and 'oh, you're everything to me'. Karkat got all embarrassed and made me put a chair over the thing so that nobody could walk in during Chichi's heartfelt red confession and ruin the moment. You know how he is." 

"Yes." Kanaya stared. 

Dave glanced between the ceiling and the floor. "So... I'll just get out of your way." 

With her chainsaw-wielding brand of daintiness, Kanaya lifted her skirt to hop up on the platform. Dave stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

"Kanaya, wait."

"Is their something else you wanted to say?" 

"Huh? Oh, no. I'm just..." Dave crossed his arms. "Just thinking... Got a lot on my mind. You know. Lots of stuff... beefcake skull monsters, troll ancestors are fucking shit up, Terezi is turning into a juggalo, Chikan is about to walk in on Chichi and Chitsu's secret rendezvous. You know. Stressful stuff. Lots of things I need to... think about... and..." 

"Hm?" She gave him a patient smile. 

"Hey, so..." Dave examined her shoes. "I was just wondering... do you know what Karkat's favorite food is?" 

Dave crossed himself and mumbled a prayer as he slid _The Notebook_ in his DVD player. 

Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams embraced on the menu screen. With his limited knowledge of romantic cinema, he divined that _The Notebook_ took home the gold in categories Most Sappy, Most Predictable, and Most Emotionally Manipulative. Nicholas Sparks' ninth symphony. Karkat's name was written all over it in all caps. 

Karkat's favorite food was something called _fyalush_ , which sounded like finger-sized maggots impaled on shishkabobs from how Kanaya described them. 

"Though I not sure how to go about alchemizing them," she explained. "There are dried snacks made from the same species of larva, and perhaps if you combined them with a stick, you might yield an approximation. 

Dave unrolled a picnic blanket across the concrete floor onto which he loaded platters lousy with juicy maggot snacks, dorritos, kettle corn, and celery sticks slathered in peanut butter. He pushed the bed closer to the cloth to create a backrest. In the dim light, candles filched from Rose's room orbited the love nest, winking at Karkat as he shuffled through the door.. 

He gawped at the arrangement. "You actually did it." 

Dave presented him with a bouquet of tulips (the closest thing to roses he could coax out of the alchemiter). "Romantic enough for you, Mr. Vantas?" 

Karkat appraised the room, from the gaudy purple candles to the DVD logo bouncing around within the TV screen. "We'll see. What have you got planned for our magical evening?" 

"Dinner and a movie, complete with ambience. A cross-cultural dating staple." 

Yellow eyes squinted. He sniffed the tulips. "Very well. Proceed." 

Dave spread his cape and bowed. "Step this way." 

The pile Dave built out of bed linens and smuppets passed Karkat's inspection. Prim as a southern belle, Karkat lowered himself onto a swirl of card suit sheets, concealing a cushion of a dozen technicolor sex puppets. He plucked a maggot shishkabob off a tray. Frowning at the yellow paste smothering the shriveled flesh, he inhaled a whiff. He bit one of the larva in half. His lips curled into his mouth as soon as it touched his tongue. "Dave, these are vile." 

Dave dropped down next to him, pulling the bowl of popcorn onto his lap. "Well, excuse the fuck out of me. I did the best I could with what I had to work with. They started out all desiccated and shit until I covered them in dijon, the secret sauce passed down through the Strider household from brother to brother. Can you taste that? It's called flavor, fucker. I bet they're miles tastier than the nasty _fyalush_ you ate back home." 

"You've got a lot of nerve calling this _fyalush_. I've picked particles out of my lusus's feces that were more appetizing than this." 

"Are you saying you ate your nanny monster's crap?" 

Karkat reddened. "You know what I mean."

"I absolutely do not."

"Just shut your bulge holster and put the movie on." 

They settled in for the opening credits. Dave sighed and pretended to check his watch when Ryan Gosling first appeared on screen. Karkat elbowed him in the ribs. Despite his initial complaints, Karkat stripped five shishkabobs and tossed the chewed up sticks to his left.  Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling flitted across the screen, blond and tragic.  Dave checked the keep case. The film was a hundred and twenty-three minutes long; differences in social status cut the lovers' romance short around the forty minute mark. New York swallowed McAdams. Unflagging devotion swallowed Gosling. 

Why didn't he write her any letters? 

He did. He wrote every day for a year. 

Et cetera. Et cetera. 

Dave almost drifted off when he heard Karkat sniffle. 

"Oh, man, no." Dave nudged him. "Don't you dare. This story is not _that_ heartbreaking. They were just dumb teenagers." 

"She waited seven years... fuck..." Karkat murmured. His eyes glistened. "Yeah, and you thought it took us forever to get our shit together." 

"Our shit is not even close to being together. Do not compare our trainwreck to the beautiful thing Noah and Allie share." 

Karkat fell silent as McAdams and Gosling embraced in the rain, melting together in the iconic kiss. She leapt into his arms. He bore her into the house, never releasing her. Clothes came off. Gosling's shirt vanished. McAdams shucked him from his pants. Her dress and slip followed, gracing the audience with a brief shot of her breasts. 

Heat swelled in Dave's cheeks. He peeked at Karkat out of the corner of his eye. Karkat observed the screen, lips parted as McAdams writhed in Gosling's lap. Up, down, up, down, grind, grind, grind. The wrinkle between his eyebrows deepened. 

"Honestly," Karkat admitted, "it feels like we've been dating for a while. More than just a week." 

Dave cleared his throat. "Yeah, seriously. How long has it been since we started hanging out? Two months?" 

"About a perigee and a half." 

"Shit, we _are_ married." 

"Mm." Karkat twirled his shoelace around his finger. "So." He pressed pause. "Do you mind if we take an intermission?" 

"For what?" 

Karkat scooted close. He touched his lips to Dave's cheek. Upon contact Dave curled in on himself like a startled pillbug and laughed. 

"What," Karkat asked. 

"Nothing." Dave snorted. "It's just that one second humans and trolls are incompatible jigsaw pieces but then the second you see Rachel McAdams's tits, suddenly xeno is your thing. Okay, Vantas." 

"Her sub-par rumblespheres have zilch to do with this, you shit," Karkat grumbled. He grabbed Dave's hood. "You've been eyeing me like you're starving and I'm the last cut of steak left in the world. I'm taking pity on you." 

The kiss was meant to be soft but his mouth landed a little too hard. His tongue swiped over Dave's. Dave sucked on his lip for a moment before Karkat recoiled. 

"What," Dave asked. 

"There's soggy popcorn in your teeth," he snapped. 

"It's extra flavor. Stop whining and come back." 

"Not until you swallow what's in your mouth." 

Dave worked his throat, demonstrating his esophagus sucking the offensive food bits away. 

Karkat squinted. "Drink something too." 

"Oh my god." Dave snatched a water bottle out of his sylladex and chugged a fourth of its contents. "There. It's clean, your highness." 

Chest to chest, Karkat pressed into him, as though he were hoping Dave’s DNA would unzip and splice with his genes. He settled for a kiss. 

Breathing hard against his neck, Dave asked, "do you want to get on my bed?"

"What's wrong with the pile?"

"Nothing, I guess. The bed is comfier, though."

Karkat tossed a glance over his shoulder at the mattress. "But isn't that where you sleep?" "Yeah. Humans usually have s... they do... they... on beds..." 

Disgust curled Karkat's lip. "That's _filthy_."

"We can throw a towel down if it bugs you that much." 

The romance ground gears while they fussed over the imminent love nest. Dave prsented him with a Dora the Explorer towel. When Karkat bitched heartily, Dave switched the young adventurer and her primate companion with a faded Scooby Doo beach rag, run through with holes and speckled with bleach stains. 

With affected hesitation, Karkat wriggled out of his clothes and placed his rump square on Fred's face. "If this is the best you can do than I guess this is acceptable." 

"Fucking excellent. I'm so glad you're being completely reasonable about this. Can we get this show on the road? Or do we need to bring everything to a screeching halt to deal with more of your hang-ups?" 

"Take your stupid clothes off and ravish me, you slobbering jackass." 

Naked except for boxers, Dave dropped down beside him. As if on instinct his fingers trailed over Karkat's bonesheath and slit. He pressed a finger into his entrance. Karkat's eyes burned into him like the Alternian sun. Dave dropped his head. He pressed a kiss to his neck, another to his ear, and for a long minute worked his fingers inside Karkat in silence, listening to him breathe. A ring of muscle pushed against him. He pushed back, and shuddered when Karkat gave him deep, whining sigh. 

Dave buried his face in his hair. Lips to his ear, he said, “Karkat.” He cringed at the squeak in his words, the uncertainty slipping through. “I want to be—to be inside you.“ His voice cracked. Dave winced; it was all falling apart. “Is that okay?" 

Karkat's fangs grazed his ear. "Do it already." 

Legs flailed as Dave scooted off the bed and positioned himself between Karkat's knees. Thighs spread, Karkat focused on the downward arrow of Dave's hipbones as the boxers slipped from them. He fumbled with the lube in his sylladex. He glanced between the bottle and his nook's parted lips as though calculating a physics equation. "How much do we use?" 

"I don't know. How about a lot? Let's just stuff you like a jelly donut to be safe." 

Karkat threw his palm over his eyes. "No more. No more dirty talk from you. You've hit your limit." 

They worked together. Fingers gooey, Dave smeared his entrance like spreading a knife-full of jam on toast. Karkat relaxed with deep breaths. 

"Okay, let's move it along," Karkat grumbled. 

"What, already?" Dave prodded his interior walls. "Are you sure?" 

"Yes, Strider. I know how my own body works, thank you very much." 

"It's still kinda tight." 

Karkat blushed and groaned. "Just go for it slowly. Believe me. It's ready. This is about as loose as its gonna get without a lot of fucking around with stretchers... and stuff." 

Dave removed his fingers. He arranged himself at the nook's furrow, braced like an army soon to throw itself against the breach. With only the head of his cock, he pushed in slow enough that Karkat grabbed his thighs and tugged him closer, deeper. Each tiny thrust Dave capped with a kiss. 

“Does it feel good,” Dave panted. Karkat choked on his reply. 

Dave nudged in farther when he felt the muscles give. They shivered around him, dancing on all sides, as curious to meet him as he was to meet them. He asked again, “Karkat, does it feel good?” 

“Yes,” he gasped, “yes, it feels good.”

“Tell me how it feels.”

Karkat bit down on his lip.

“C’mon,” Dave coaxed, “you can say.”

“No, you freakshow.” He groaned and turned his face away, shaking his head. 

Dave pressed his mouth against Karkat’s ear; the tip flapped against his cheek. “You feel nice. You feel so amazing”—Karkat’s muscles quivered, pulling him in—“ _oh fuck_. You... feel warm. Warm and wet. I want to be so deep in you. And you’re tight”—Dave swallowed—“really tight. Does it hurt?” 

Karkat shook his head, eyes clenched shut. 

Dave continued, pressing in a centimeter farther. “And you’re so soft. Soft like, fucking, I don’t know, like little baby chicks or something. Silky and fluttery and warm—” 

Karkat’s eyes flew open. “Dave, what the fuck?” 

“Okay, give me a break. I can’t hardly think straight with your magic alien pussy sucking all the blood out of my brain into my dick.” 

“What is it with you and birds?”

“Oh my god. Nothing is with me and birds.” 

“Your dirty talk is a fucking travesty,” Karkat snickered. As his tension released, Dave pressed forward. Karkat whined. A purr spiraled out of his throat and vibrated in Dave’s chest. 

“Oh yeah?” Dave murmured. He pressed his lips into the cup of Karkat’s ear. “What if I said I want to fuck your sweet little nook until you come all over yourself.” 

Karkat gaped. 

“Now you,” Dave said again, mouthing a sloppy kiss onto his shoulder. 

The purr sputtered to a stop. Dave thrust gently, trying to start it up again, like revving a car’s engine. Karkat shook his head. “I can’t say that shit...” 

Dave sucked a kiss onto his neck. “You don’t have to tell me in English.” With a wiggle of his finger, he coiled Karkat's bulge around his hand, winning him a low moan. 

Karkat muttered something under his breath. 

"What was that?" 

" _Hat sam_ ," Karkat whispered. " _Beravat mli sam_." 

"Yeah?" Dave's lips massaged the curl of his pointed ear. "Tell me more. How do you like your dog? Beef, pork, or one hundred percent kosher?" 

Karkat smacked the side of his head. " _Veshat ti... ridko nur ayam. Garg swayurat ker. Hat undyu."_

The little growl in _garg_ sent shivers through Dave as though he were a fault line in earthquake weather. "Oh fuck, that's hot. Say something else." 

Karkat writhed. He whined _, "Hat aanang tem... ah taag't, kash, sururk. Viratak ka ker."_

Dave rolled his hips harder but with every stuttered thrust, he slowed. “I... okay, I... uh... wow. Okay.”

Karkat bit off a moan. “Why in the unfresh fuck are you stopping,” he hissed. 

“Um...” Dave’s hips shook. It was like trying to twerk in molasses. “I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.” 

Karkat's eye narrowed. “What?” 

“I—wow, sorry. Give me a minute,” Dave huffed. “There are some things porn doesn’t prepare you for.” 

Karkat snarled. “Strider, damn it. Your mammalian lovemaking skills leave a lot to be desired.” 

Dave glanced down at his trembling knees. Casanova Strider was not in top form. “Give me a break. This is my first time.” 

A gentled hand stroked his jaw. Karkat nudged his chin with a kiss. "It's okay. It's fine. Get on your back." 

"How will that help?" 

He heaved a long-suffering sigh and flipped Dave over, almost flinging both of them from the bed in the process. Karkat perched over his cock. He lowered his hips slow and careful. Dave fisted the sheets. 

When he slipped inside the silky entrance, Karkat mewled. Dave matched him. It was the faces he made; The crease between his brows, the sharp teeth biting and releasing his bottom lip, the eyes closed in concentration, the hunched shoulders. Karkat raised his chin, presenting him with his vulnerable throat. His ears fell into a gesture of submission. Dave melted. 

"You look good," he said. 

Karkat grunted. A bead of sweat crawled down his nose. 

Shuddering, Dave watched open-mouthed as centimeter by centimeter his erection vanished into a sheath of red and grey. He felt something within Karkat yield to the head. He furrowed his brows. It was as though something split open deep inside him. 

Like a pop-up book raptor, Dave leapt out of his slouch and attacked his throat. He sucked kisses from the soft flesh. He nibbled the tips of his ears. " _Tantat ker ti_ ,” he murmured. 

A trill tumbled in Karkat's chest. He shuddered. "Wow... watch it with the deep confessions there. Don't want me to come too soon." The sarcasm dwindled beneath the small smile stretched over his lips. Up and down he bounced, hair stuck to his forehead. He panted, "I like you too." 

"But do you _like_ like me," Dave asked, mouth pinched in a pouty moue. "I've got your nasty mammal phallus jammed inside me don't I?" 

"Yeah," Dave hummed. "You look good, too. _Umalla._ "

Karkat frowned and shook his head. 

" _Sal_ ," Dave insisted. " _Hat ti chi gi umalla gi helamaliim._ Check out my complete and grammatical sentences. Seduced yet, Vantas?" 

Karkat snorted. He smoothed a hand over Dave's chest, tracing the muscles' planes. " _Ah, eba. Sri umalla_." 

"How do I say... _Hat ti_ the tastiest piece of ass I've ever been balls deep in?" 

Karkat's mouth pursed. " _Hat ti dzuge rethish."_

Dave propped his body up for a kiss. Karkat flicked him between the eyes. They rolled together, like uneven and shaky waves undulating over a boulder-studded shoreline. More than once Karkat lifted himself too high, sliding off of Dave's cock. He swore. 

Dave snickered. "We can go slow or whatever. This isn't the Indy 500 and you're not Mario Andretti tearing the track up... and... shit, I had something good. Something about stick shifts. Oh, here..." With one hand he helped guide his cock back inside the nook's hot embrace. He shivered as Karkat rearranged his legs. 

"Are you close," Karkat huffed. Drool glistened at the corner of his mouth. "Because I'm seriously about to collapse." 

"Oh, look whose lovemaking skills aren't cutting it now. Not so easy, is it?"  


"Is your species just naturally athletic? How the hell do you make it to the end?" 

The pleasure expanded in Dave's belly, pushing out like a hotblooded beast ready to hatch from its egg. "Wanna switch again?" 

"Oh no, no, no, I'm not going to last." 

Karkat's eyes squeezed shut in concentration. His bulge did the same, constricting around Dave's fingers. Dave squeezed back. His nook answered, rippling as though dancing to the music of 

Karkat's mewls. Dave thrust up to meet him. A steady pulse—Karkat's heartbeat—thrummed around his cock. 

"Can you feel my heart in my dick?" 

"Can I—? What," he asked, bouncing harder. His eyelids cracked open, gazing down at Dave. "Your what?" 

Dave pushed himself up and pressed a kiss to his clavicle, head-butting Karkat in the jaw in the process. "I can feel yours." 

Karkat's end came before he could reply. He wailed and spilled over Dave's hand, belly, and thighs. Scooby and the gang got more than their fair share of xenosplooge. Karkat peeled off Dave like a bandaid, his sticky skin yanking blond pubic hair as he lifted off Dave's lap. Shaking, he dropped his feet on the floor. Dave stroked himself. He stared at the pink dribbling down his abdomen, the pink dribbling down Karkat's thighs, and the pink smears on Karkat's belly. 

A grey hand wrapped around his wrist. Dave glanced up at him. "You want to do this part," he asked. 

Karkat tilted his head. "Yeah, I... Actually, I want to try something." 

He clicked open his sylladex and sifted through the options (scythes, a candy bar, a fucking chair, the Tale of Chichi and Chitsu [hardcover first edition, naturally], a green scalemate) until his fingers passed over a pair of rubbery crescents. 

"What are those," Dave asked. He reached out to grab one. Karkat smacked his hand away. "Are those for you or for me? Is that candy? They look like fake vampire teeth." 

"I alchemized these a while ago... you know, just in case." 

Karkat stretched his jaw wide, sliding the slips of rubber past his lips. They fit over his fangs like retainers. 

For a beat, Dave stared. His gears spun, manufacturing an answer with equipment so rusted it predated the industrial revolution. What did Karkat need with silicon retainers? Was he protecting his teeth, or protecting something _from_ his teeth? Hmmmm... what does one sometimes do with one's mouth in a situation such as this? 

Dave's pelvis jerked. "Oh Jesus Christ on a tightrope, please tell me those are what I think they are. How long have you had those? Did you plan this? Shit, you sneaky, sexy bastard—" 

Karkat licked his lips. "Dave," he said, muffled through the rubber suctioned to his teeth. "Don't kill the mood." 

With a handful of beach towel, Karkat wiped his work area clean until Velma—the lucky girl— came away smeared from cheeks to chest with musky pink. Dave winced at the rough fibers scraping over his flesh. His grimace gave way to a grin and a laughing gasp when Karkat fell to his knees and lapped with a satin tongue at the underside of his cock.  In foggy moments when more blood was in his groin than in his brain, Dave's flat voice gave way to the texan thrum that crouched in secret under his words. Every "ar" sound stretched long and deep. Sweeth _ear_ t. D _ar_ ling. K _ar_ kat. 

"Karkat," he moaned. "Move up just a little— _yes_ , there. Perfect, perfect. Fuck, yeah." 

Plush lips sucked the spot just below the cockhead. Dave stared enraptured as Karkat's mouth wrapped around his shaft, molding to fit the mushroom head. 

Dave ran a hand through his hair. He dug his thumb into the flesh encircling a horn. Karkat trilled deep in his chest. 

"You can suck a little bit on the whole thing... like, all of it. Like if you're down for it. I'm not trying to make you do anything you don't want to do. I'm just saying that if you feel adventurous you should just go for it. Because I'm totally willing to take that journey with you. Just call me Samwise Gamgee. We're going to... climb this whole gay mountain. _Holy baby Jesus_ , I can't believe we waited until we were sixteen to do this. Well, I'm sixteen. You're, like, seven and a half. But this meteor could've been blow job central for the past three years. Meanwhile we've been fucking around reading romance novels and building can town. Now don't get me wrong, can town is an essential operation for our survival, but I'm sure you could've been sucking it while I-I-I-ah..." 

Karkat dipped his head, pushing more of Dave over the cradle of his tongue, not going farther than the edge of his palate. With a sound like a cap popping off a bottle of soda, he pulled off. His lips caressed the head, leaving one kiss, two kisses, three, four, while his fingers ran down the shaft, seeking the curve of his testicles. 

"Holy shit. _Holy_ shit," Dave breathed. "How... have you been reading Rose's fanfiction?" 

A frown warped Karkat's pucker. "Believe it or not, your species is not the only one to figure out how to put apply a mouth to genitals. I've read a raunchier romance novel or two." Drool spewed from the corner of his slurring mouth. 

"Two? Or twelve. Hot damn." 

"You said you like it when these are touched. Should I just..." Karkat tugged gently, balls pressed between his thumb and forefinger. 

"Yeah, that's okay. And you don't have to hold them like they're baby hamsters. Squeeze a little harder— _no, no, not that hard. Abort, abort. Stop."_

_"_ You said _harder_."

"Okay, never mind, forget about my nuts. Leave them alone. Let's just focus on the main event for  now." 

Following an acrobatic eyeroll, Karkat returned the dick to his mouth. Each bob of his head produced a lollipop-wet suck. Dave moaned, helpless. He combed his fingers through the black hair, pausing to scratch behind his ears. The trill in Karkat's throat produced a tiny vibration in his cockhead. His toes curled. 

Soft and sincere, Karkat smothered kisses down his length, milking a dribble of cum from the slit. White smeared his lips. Karkat grimaced at the taste in the same instant Dave's climax rolled over his body. They both yelped. Dave, for the warm bubble bursting in his pelvis, and Karkat, from the result of said release splattering him. 

"Are you fucking kidding me," Karkat spat. 

"Sorry. Not really, but you know..." Dave threw his arms around him and pulled him into a horizontal hug. "We're even. Equally bukkake'd." 

"We're equally disgusting. Look at this fucking mess." 

"It's probably soaked through the towel into the mattress." Dave yawned. "Oh well." 

"Let's get this cleaned up before we become permanently fused together." 

"Let's not." 

Grunting, Karkat tried to extract himself from the knot of limbs. "We still haven't finished watching the movie." 

Dave tugged him back. "Who cares?" 

"I care, you self-centered sack of crap. I want to know what happens with Allie and Noah." 

"No, fuck that." Dave buried a kiss in the slope of his neck. "Stay here. Be my snuggle bitch." 

One hand gripping Dave's shoulder, Karkat flipped him over onto his side and nestled in behind him. "The only snuggle bitch here is you." 

"Oh fuck no, you're not making me the little spoon." 

They wrestled, hands caressing thighs and groping asses and tracing spines. Karkat pinned Dave face-down on the mattress, groin pressed into his ass. Dave ground back against him. 

"Hey," Dave said, "give me some time to recover before we dive into round two." 

Karkat squeaked. "God, that's... in your fucking dreams are we doing that. Finger your nasty hole on your own time." 

Noodle-limbed, Dave lay under him as Karkat arranged their bodies. Little spoon, big spoon. Warm breath puffed against the back of Dave's neck. Neither spoke. With his back to Karkat's chest, Dave tracked his heartbeat as it slowed to a steady march. 

Karkat opened his sylladex and grabbed a music grub. "Here," he said, fiddling with the beast. "If we're not going to watch the movie, we can at least do something romantic." 

The beat pumped into Dave's brain, leaving him awash in a slow song, rife with dips and calm swells. 

Karkat rested his head against Dave's spine, eyelids heavy with afterglow. "You translate it."

Dave sucked his teeth. "Why? Sex was so good that you can't be bothered?" 

"Or we can just listen to it as it is, you fucking brat. Just humor me. It's a good song. And the vocabulary isn't too complicated." 

The tempo swayed out of the speakers, in no hurry to get where it was going. The singer enunciated each word. He drew the syllables out slow enough that Dave took his time making the connections. 

"Okay..." Dave processed the words at half the speed at which they arrived in his mind. "So, I think he's talking about smoking hash..." 

"What's hash?"

He heaved a sigh. "Sorry, I forgot. Trolls." 

Karkat bit his ear.

"Ow, fuck. So, it's _catnip_ he's all strung out on." 

Karkat sighed. "Again with your Earth-centric assumptions. I have no idea why humans associate nip with cats. Your species is the only one that does this. Your people are weird ones here, not mine." 

"Fine, fine. Jesus. Rewind the song. I missed a ton while you were bitching at me." 

Karkat tapped the grub. The song picked up in the middle of the first verse. 

"Right so... he says... _people told me slow my_ , uh... _I'm screaming out fuck that. I'll do just what I want looking ahead, no turning back. If I fall, if I die know I lived it_... fuck, I don't know that one. Okay, so, _if I fall if I die know I lived and missed some_... _shaka_." 

"Bullets."

"Bullets. Missed some bullets. Okay... _I'm on the pursuit of_ —" 

Karkat's arm wrapped around his waist. His fingers wove with his, forming a fist against his abdomen. Dave choked on the word _happiness._ He glanced down at the hand wrapped around his. 

"What's up? Why'd you stop," Karkat asked. He leaned over Dave's shoulder. "Oh. You've got a problem with holding hands?" 

"No," Dave said before Karkat could unlace their fingers. His cheeks reddened as though scalded. "It's cool. No need to make it a thing." He rolled his thumb over Karkat's calloused knuckles, finding a scar on the meat of his palm, where the flesh was conditioned rough from wielding scythes. 

"Dave. The song?"

"Oh, right." The chorus was long over. Dave strained to jump into the next verse. 

"If you're seriously exhausted we can pass out right here." Karkat nudged his head with a horn. "I'm tired too." 

"No man, we can keep the romance going. I'm romancing you," he said, stifling a yawn. "So much romance. Look at me go. Roll it back again." 

Karkat released Dave's hand to rewind the song. The chorus resumed. Dave engulfed Karkat's fingers in his grip. He squeezed his fist tight to his belly. 

"Okay..." Dave followed the song over the bridge. " _I know everything that_... uh, _shine... shine_?" Karkat nodded, nose caressing his back. " _Ain't always gonna be gold. I'll be fine once I get it. I'll be good._ " 

The verse repeated itself. 

"That wasn't too shitty, right," Dave asked. 

"Yeah, you got pretty much all of it right." Karkat stifled a yawn, mouth smashed into Dave's shoulder blade. "D'you want to keep going? Or should we call it a day... and take a shower..." 

"Hell no, I'm on a roll. Don't let me stop you though." He stroked Karkat's wrist, teasing the pulse beneath the skin. Every muscle in Karkat released as he drifted off. With his forehead on Dave's nape he succumbed to sleep. His arms tightened around Dave's middle. 

Dave leaned over to grapple with the lamp on the bedside table. To reach the switch, he wriggled out of Karkat's grasp, but nestled back into the circle of his arms after the light blinked out. The DVD logo cycled around the idle television screen. Karkat murmured and purred. Once the purring began, it hummed over both the sound of the song and the whine of the electricity streaking through the TV. 

"Karkat," Dave whispered. "You asleep?" 

A quiet mew (disguised in a snore) answered him. Dave rolled over. Face to face, he studied Karkat as the breath entered and exited his mouth, and the flutter of his eyelashes lowered against his cheeks. 

The music grub curled in Dave's palm. He dialed the volume down and translated under his breath, " _tell me what you know about dreaming, dreaming. You don't really know about nothing, nothing. Tell me what you know about them night terrors every night. Five AM cold sweats, waking up to the sky_..." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if you spot errors! AO3 changed the original format and it came out a little weird.


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